Erica arborea yamadori

Hello everyone,

This is one of my projects, it has a meter tall and many years.


Shari in trunk:



A rock roots:


Will stay in the greenhouse for several months to show signs of recovery

Will be interesting to see what develops with time. You have some fascinating wood with which to work.

Will stay in the oven for several months to show signs of recovery

I don't think you mean "oven" n the same way I would??

Hi !

The translators sometimes have tricky translations .

Oven in this case I think means Greenhouse or something near that!

BTW the tree is very good but I guess it is a very difficult species to work.

Good luck!

Mário Eusébio

Sorry, my mistake.

The error has been corrected

Hi Jorge!

This is very good material! I've collected in past a similar species here in Madeira, but I was never successful. On the other hand, I've seen some wonderful erica bonsai from Italy, so it is possible!

I'm curious about the soil mix you used. Could you please provide us with some more details? And do keep us informed, I'm very interested in the evolution of this project.

Kind regards,
Pedro

Hi Pedro!

Ericas like a very acid soil, so everything wich has this type of conditions can be a good solution!

I normaly use kanuma or pine bark composted, generaly the soil for "orquideas" is acceptable!

One thing that was told to me by a guy who has several sucessfully collected is that the variety Arborea is the easiest to collect, he told that it is easy to recognize, because it has white flowers!!! Indeed this is true, Arborea is collectable if we ensure the mininum roots, wich are A LOT. Ericas behave similar to Rosemary, as they have very defined live veins with low sap, this means that every major root that we cut a vein will die...

So the trick to sucess, at least to me this year has been working, is only collect the ones we can collect with almost every roots, that means they are very difficult to find...due to their normal tendency to have long roots and stuck in the midle of the rocks...

Best regards,

Mário Eusébio

Hello, yes it is true, arborea have the white flowers.

the soil I used was turf, expanded clay (leca) and sphagnum moss, in proportions 40/40/20 +-

Hi guys!

Mário, thanks for the comprehensive reply. That's really useful information. Here in Madeira the most common heather species is Erica platycodon, known locally as "urze das vassouras" (roughly, "broom heather", since its branches were used in the past to make brooms). It has pale pink flowers and blossoms by late spring or early summer. It is endemic from Madeira, Azores and the Canary islands. I have never seen a bonsai of this species, but I'll probably give it another try with the soil mix you suggested and the one Jorge used.

Does anyone know how heathers react to air-layering?

Jorge, I apologise for highjacking your topic. Thank you for providing the details of the soil mix you used. It is indeed quite an acidic mix!

Regards,
Pedro

Hi Pedro!

Your welcome!

I've never tryed the ayer-layering, so I don't know how it reacts, but I've seen some sucessuflly collected that were "worked" in the ground for 2 years with partial ground-layerings, very huge (and good!) trees but they were Arboreas!

This Year I give it a try with very good specimens of the pink flowers variety, very old with life veins and dead wood very good, those are very tought to recover, but some of them have by now 1 to 2 month in my place and they haven't loosed their small leaves wich is a very good sign, because normaly with my previous attempts, they tend to loose all the leaves sometimes the day atfer collection one of them is also with lots of new shoots.

Form the Arborea variety, I know and saw some friends of my Club that have sucessfully collected it and the trees are growing with lots of "power".

Go on and try it!

Best regards,

Mário Eusébio

Hi Jorge,

Do you have news from this Erica?



João Santos

Poster hasn't been on the forum for over 4 years.

Thanks Fiona

That's too bad. I know nothing about this material and would love to know what happened...

It would be good. Maybe we'll have prompted him to come back on and tell us.