Casuarina Equisetifolia (Cemara Udang or Mu Ma Huang)

Nice tree Allan,I presume the "leaves" are already there when you planted this agoho if you have planted it just a month ago.

For casuarinas Bicol is a good source.

Old barks makes casuarinas more elegant so i suggest you dont remove it, if its the insects you worry about, a little insecticide can do the job for you.

Regards
Pabling

Hi Alan,
Congratulations for yet another fantastic yamadori. What are the percentages of compost to volcanic cinder that you use for your yamadori? Do you cover them in a transparent plastic bag until new growth is evident?
Thanks for sharing
Cosmos

hi ! cosmos

sorry for the late reply , right now all the remaining casuarina ive planted ,ive covered them with transparent plasticbag , samething with all my other variety yamadori bonsai , ,about the medium i used ,the bottom part i put the bigger sizes volcanic cinder for better drain ,then the compost wherein the trees will be sitted ,then again portion of compost up to almost tip of the pot then lastly on top is the smaller sizes volcanic cinder to prevent the compost to be wash out

Hi Alan,
Thanks for sharing your experinece with casuarina. I really like this species. I see that both your yamadori have deadwood. In one the deadwood is black while in the other it is greyish. Can you explain why? And do you treat the deadwood regularly?

Thanks and regards
Cosmos

the natural color of the driftwood of the casuarina is like grayish black ,for treating the wood i used Waterproofing (water Base) and i apply 2 coatings , the outcome is like a natural color of the driftwood ,and it will take a couple of months before it fades, try not to apply many coatings it will became a little bit shiny

I like your Casuarina, good job. Greetings from Ecuador.

Hi Alan,
it has been quite a long time since we talked about casuarina. Did your yamadori root? Can you pl share with us any picture to show their progression.

Cosmos

What a stunning tree. It makes me laugh these trees are an Australian native from the warm tropics in the north, but they are rarely if ever seen as bonsai in this country. I live in the cooler southern part of the continent and grow torulosa and litoralis but unfortunately its too cold for this species. It would be great if you could post some pics of these trees on the AUSBONSAI forum to encourage the queenslanders to cultivate this species.
With thanks from Craig

craigw wrote:What a stunning tree. It makes me laugh these trees are an Australian native from the warm tropics in the north, but they are rarely if ever seen as bonsai in this country. I live in the cooler southern part of the continent and grow torulosa and litoralis but unfortunately its too cold for this species. It would be great if you could post some pics of these trees on the AUSBONSAI forum to encourage the queenslanders to cultivate this species.
With thanks from Craig

Ahh but we are craig! Havent had much success as yet but i feel confident that it isn't far away.......

Hi Peter, I am very very happy to see that, looks like you have some great collected material there. I believe this should be one of our principal species.
Craig

Hi Peter,
Nice collection of yamadori casuarinas. Are they in water before you put them in their training pots? Did you manage to collect them with enough feeding roots or did you wash all the root ball? THanks for sharing.

Cosmos

They were soaking in a tub of ST Cosmos. We did manage to get some finer roots, didnt get much success with this lot though. Will be trying again soon.

Nice Material Peter :-)

I collected a few that had been dug up from a development near home but do not know if they have survived yet
They had been cut down to the stump and pullled out by bulldozer
I hope they can be saved. They are in Grow boxes now so hope they shoot in spring

Craig i agree that Casuarina should be Grown by all aussies too. they are our "Pines" and can look verry nice too :-)

Ken

You are very beautiful bonsai. About a few years old

hi cosmos,

good day , one of this day i will post a picture of my casuari , unfortunately i only had 1 left ,cause some of them was bought by my friend ,and others was been damage by the typhoon ondoy

thaks n regards

allan

Hi Jose Luis.

I was searching in the web for more info and pictures about casuarina but my search keeps coming back to this forum they called IBC .
I am wondering if you have some updated photos of the lovely trees you have shared here. specially the small one on the first page and how the nebari of the other tree with redirected roots (with pipe) looks like today. I am more interested now than before to learn more about the specie as my casuarinas are increasing more in numbers and becoming my favorite specie. I think they are fastly outgrowing my limited knowledge of their specie.

regards,
jun

Jun,

Agoho....a beautiful tree species, particularly for those who do not have access to Pines. As of today, I haven't had the time to take any update pictures on any of my trees. I am now in the process of moving my whole collection to a new garden, which is taking the great mayority of my time. My new home is right besides a river, so the humidity is making my Bantigue trees grow like weeds.

Agoho/Casuarina is a lovely species. Once established, they really grow. The only problem is that they do require exposure to the wind and loose potting medium. In your case, this will not be a problem. On another note and after establishing casuarina in a pot, healthy roots will exhibit root nodules that are frequently mistaken for nematode infestation. Casuarina, like some legumes, eleagnus and other species, have nitrogen fixating nodules that help enrich their soil/medium environment. This is common place with all Primary Succesion plant species.

Primary succession is one of two types of biological and ecological succession of plant life, occurring in an environment in which new substrate devoid of vegetation and usually lacking soil, such as a lava flow deposits. In other words, it is the gradual growth of an ecosystem over a longer period of time. This is the reason behind the fact that so many casuarinas grow in the volcanic islands of the Phillipines and Indonesia. As far as the shapes found in your region, it is due to the fact the the indegenous people, for hundreds, perhaphs thousands of years, used to cut them for fuel and fire wood. Because of this, instead of growing straight as an arrow, you might find trees with contorted trunks.

I hope this helps you to better understand the nature of these fascinating trees.

Kind regards,

Jose Luis

Many thanks for the detailed added info Jose Luis.

Now I am more interested in seeing the trees in your new garden and the whole garden itself of course. please do share it with us once you got the time to photographed the new garden. I can sense that you are loving more Phempis acidula, good luck. Mine is the opposite, I am reducing the number of my Phempis in exchanged for more "Casuarina equisitifolia", as my garden is deeply entrenched in the the city which makes the life of my "bantigue" more stressful.

regards,
jun

Jose,

Really nice tree! It's great to see a Casuarina bonsai that doesn't try to look like a pine, but rather celebreates a more natural form.

Luis,,
Nice Casuarina!!! I have aslo some casuarinas here...Still in training...As of now,, I have no problem with these specie..Any way this thread is very informative.
your friend
Ogi

Hi Jun
If you need more info on casuarinas pl go to our website http://bonsaimalta.org/index.htm
and scroll down until you arrive at the title 'Casuarina - A Newcomer to Maltese Bonsai'. This is my presentation for a lecture I gave some years back at our bonsai club.

I like this species too for it is a very good replacement of pines (more reasons in the presenatation). Indeed, I have planted with the help of some of our dedicated members about 100 casuarinas grown from seeds in the ground in our nursery in our club's bonsai garden. We do not have the previlege of finding good yamadori casuarinas here, so we have to start from humble beginings. But I believe that in time we will create artistic pieces with this species.

Cosmos

PS
In my presentation I intentionally have put two photos of pines. This I did to check on the keen members to distinguish casuarinas from pines. For when trained well casuarinas from afar resemble pines.

Cosmos

Cosmos,

thanks for the link to your presentations. i hope more people can read it here, it is very informative.
Is the trees in the cliffside located in your country?

regards,
jun

No. We only have casuarinas growing along many of our streets and in traffic islands i.e. they have been planted by man. I will later post a series of pics to show a technique that I am using to arrive at a decent result from seeds in three years. I say 'decent' because the texture of the trunk needs more years to mature.

cosmos

Nice Casuarina Jose..
All the info as described by Jose are correct, maybe my article on Casuarina can add something : http://robert-steven.ofbonsai.org/articles/

Here is one of my Casuarina as you may have seen many times..and just to show you the leaves cluster, the way we train in Indonesia.
I am on my way to Inner Mongol..enjoy the forum....









You can see more of my Casuarina collection on my FaceBook : www.facebook.com/robertbonsai