MY HAWTHORNS IN AUTHUMN COLORS.

Hi everybody,
late this afternoon the all ready setting Sun finaly broke trough the clouds! So I finally was able to make some pictures of some of my Hawthorns in their Autumn colors! And not a day to soon, last day's rain and wind had thorn off a lot of foliage! And me moving them around to fast in a hurry did not help eather! And in the case of the largest one, well I did not realize just how heavy the tree realy was and having to carry it from one end of my garden to the other end , made me drop it just a little to hard on the table that I prepared for the camera! It snowed yellow leaves for a few seconds and left the poor tree allmost naked! Anyhow, I wanted to share some of these pictures with you all. I just love to see those seasonal changes in these little trees!
Below: This "Dutch" Hawthorn yamadori is still in training and the two bottom branches that were allowed to grow freely fore two seasons, still need to be shortened. And the rest of the branches needs more growth to fill out the desired image.


Below:This is a other "Dutch" Hawthorn" , the large and heavy one I mentioned before. It lost most of it's foliage, but I hurt my back again lifting it, so we call it even! This tree has come a long way in the past years, almost all branches on it are new and it needs a bit more time to fill out the foliage, but I like the way it is coming along!

Below: This is one of my older Hawthorns that I collected with Tony Tickle in Wales, way back in '97! It lives for many years now, in a special for this tree designed pot by Brian Albright. I was delighted to show it in the 2005 "Ginkgo Awards"! I dont bleach deadwood on my Hawthorns so it is a bit hard to tell from this picture, but the life vain curls upward around the trunk like a snake and it's bark is getting better and better as the years go by!

Below: This is one of my favorites trees in my collection, it was collected in '99 in Wales. I was proud to show it in full bloom in the 2005 "Joy of Bonsai (UK) and a year latter in the 2006 'Ginkgo Awards"in Belgium. It needs some tinning out in the left top and some smaller branches need to be wired to bring them back into place, but I like it's image of a old tree and I love the bark that is getting better with each year that passes. And I have a very special pot to plant it in next year!

I hope you enjoyed the pictures?!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.
[b]

The characteristics of the Hawthorns leaf and branch structure together with their mature bark, very inspirational trees tidy.

Hi Hans,
I love Hawthorn and yours inparticular are exceptionally good.
I have about 6 of my own at different stages, do you have any tips on Hawthorn growth? What is your regime in getting your trees to this stage and keeping them there.

Mick

Hi Hans,

Love the pics, and the yellow color of leaves is just great.
But I think that there are some more haws that deserves their one minute glory, don't you think?

Please, post some more. We all are enjoying it.

Rui

Gorgeous trees. I doubt mine will ever equal them.

Why do you want to shorten the bottom branches of the first tree?

Hans

I had the same idea today, photograph Hawthorn before the wind and rain strips them.
Still very much in training, waiting for leaves to drop before i autumn prune the ext growth, hope you like them

Had to laugh out loud about you dropping the tree on the table and it snowing yellow leaves.
Beautiful trees and very nice photography!
It's nice to see color on the foilage, something we don't see very much of in Southern California.

When someone produces such a high standard of tree they set the bar very high to follow. Your tree has an interesting trunk, i read a passage some time ago about encouraging the bark to age by wrapping in sphagnum moss for a year or so. Also i would remove some of your berries they look great but take a lot of the trees energy to produce.

Hi Hans.

Stunning trees in great colors.
Can't stop staring at the last one

Hi Hans
Really beautiful trees. Fall color adds beauty. It forces to meditation. Beautiful.

Gretings Pavel

handy mick wrote:Hi Hans,
I love Hawthorn and yours inparticular are exceptionally good.
I have about 6 of my own at different stages, do you have any tips on Hawthorn growth? What is your regime in getting your trees to this stage and keeping them there.

Mick

Thanks Mick,
and I would gladly share my Hawthorn regime with you, although I did not know that I had one, but it would fill two pages. The shorter way for me to show you how I worked on and styled these Hawthorn's that I posted here and others, is for you to go to my website (link below this post) and click on bonsai stories. There you can see step by step how they are styled and worked one! I am currently working on the stories of the first and second hawthorn that I posted and they should be ready and on my website at the end of this week! It takes so long to find old usable pictures of my trees among the many, many hundreds that I have to go trough and than scan them all in and enhance them! Although it is fun to look to all those old pictures, aaaahh we were so young and thin, back in those day's!
There is one thing that I do like to share, because it is a important fact to consider before you start to work on your Hawthorn! Imagien you have grown a new branch or top on a mid size size to large Hawthorn. You have allowed that new branch or new top to grow freely for two, tree or even four seasons, until it has grown past it desired length and has some thickness to it. During those growing years you have wired the branch or top to give it movement (especially during the first years when the new branches are still verry bendable). So than you cut that branch back to just above a secondary branch that grows close to the desired length for that branch or top. This secondary branch will become the new leader/top for your new branch or top! This would be more or less the normal way to go on many deciduous trees. From this point onwards the secondary branches that grow close to the trunk will now be allowed to grow longer than the ones closer to the tip of the new branch or top. Those secondary branches that are allowed to grow longer and thicker will automatically thicken your new main branch or top way more than the secondary branches that are consistently cut back will do! So when you repeat this procedure over the next couple of seasons, your new branch or top will have grown a nice and natural looking tapper! ......Well not on my Hawthorn's! On Hawthorn's, when you cut a several year old 0,4Inch/1cm thick new branch back to lets say 8 Inch/20cm. And from here you want to follow the normal procedure that I explained above to shape that branch over the next couple of years...well forget it! Ones a Hawthorn (in a pot) branch is cut back, it will not thicken much anymore! No matter how many secondary branches you will let grow freely from them, there will hardly be any thickening on the main branch!
Below: Look at that sacrifice branch (red arrow) that was allowed to grow for 3 seasons on the base of that new branch. Until it was almost as thick as the main branch it self! Desperate trying to thicken that part of the branch, well you can see for your self, almost nothing! And I have more similar examples!



So what have I learned from this all? Well on all the new Hawthorn's that I started to work on over the last 5 or 6 years, I used a other way of branch building. A more cut and grow method! Grow, wire, and than cut back to secondary branch close to the trunk! And that is don over and over again! The trick here is to find a place to cut that will be the least visible from the front! This is importand because Hawthorn dont close wounds easy and often leave a bulging wound! So cuts should be made with that knowledge in mind!
Below: This Hawthorn's (pic.2010) foliage is made with the cut and grow technique.



These branches have a nice taper. Now this is a smaller tree, but it works just as good on my larger ones, it only takes longer! I hope that this all makes a bit sense? I thought it would be a useful tip!

JimLewis wrote:Gorgeous trees. I doubt mine will ever equal them.

Why do you want to shorten the bottom branches of the first tree?

Hi Jim,
I am glad you like them! Your answer about those bottom branches is answered in the above. Those two branches would be just about the right length, but because of the lack of tapper on them, I allowed some secondary branches, that were growing closer to the trunk, to grow freely! I will cut these two old branches back to one of those secondary branches, so that they will become the new leader/top of these old branches! ! This will cost me a couple off extra years of branch building! But after that period I will have a branch with natural looking tapper and more and better movement! And I am a sucker for good looking branch structure, so it is worth it! If I only had know this 15 years ago, it would have saved my self a lot of time!:0
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

[quote="Thinktreedanielsan"]Hans

I had the same idea today, photograph Hawthorn before the wind and rain strips them.
Still very much in training, waiting for leaves to drop before i autumn prune the ext growth, hope you like them

quote]

Hi Thinktreedanielsan,
I sure do like your Hawthorn! It is a natural looking and verry elegant literati! And these berries on it make a verry pleasing picture! I hope you dont mind, but I have a suggestion for you to consider? That bottom hanging branch on the right side grows from the inside of that elegant curve. And that should be avoided, not because it is a rule, but because of aesthetic reasons! Branches growing visually from the inside of a curve, can and most likely will diminish the flow of the trunk movement! Again, it is no rule, but the trunk movement often just look a little bit better with out branches growing from the inside of curves! And in this case, I do belief that you dont need that branch! I made a quick virtual to show what I mean.

But you made a verry promising bonsai that in a few years time will be Bonsai candy for the eyes!
Thanks for charring!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hello,

very good tree and very good job with your hawthorn.

I have a question about bark. did you have a tips to have better bark on crataegus ?
I have heard about mouss on the trunk.

Thank you Hans very much for your fantastic info,
Your trees are the ducks guts and I will certainly use your guidance.

Regards

Mick

Lovely. I wish I had a nice hawthorn...

Nik Rozman wrote:Lovely. I wish I had a nice hawthorn...

AAAaaaaahhh that's sad! But you do have a nice Pinus!
Just kidding my friend!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Good one!

Just kidding.

Hans, thanks a lot for sharing the photos of your most interesting trees and as well as your detailed styling advice!

Cheers,
Andrei

petit-arbre wrote:Hello,

very good tree and very good job with your hawthorn.

I have a question about bark. did you have a tips to have better bark on crataegus ?
I have heard about mouss on the trunk.

Hi petit-arbre,
sorry for the late reply to your question, but I completely overlooked it! I dont realy have a tip that I use to improve the bark on my Hawthorn. But I have found out that this will happen all by it self as the years go bye. During all the seasons that it takes you to form your tree, the bark will age naturally! When you provide for your Hawthorn a good place to live, in good soil were roots can grow freely and you feed it regular, than the trunk and older branches will swell and the bark will crack! It just takes time! But, yes there is a but, some Hawthorns just seam to have a smooth skin by nature, even the older ones! And those are notorious for, you guessed it, their smooth skins that just wound age! Hawthorn's grow plenty along our coastline and it is amazing to see that among the hundreds of small Hawthorn's that grow there, there are always a few among them that have smooth skin! Must be wrong genes?! This could and maybe should be a criteria to consider when selecting your future Hawthorn Bonsai material. But there is hope! I know that my friend Tony Tickle had one of these smooth skinned Hawthorn's that he styled like a beautiful old giant tree. But because of the lack of old bark the tree still looked young! So he wrapped wet sphagnum moss around the trunk of the tree and kept it one there for quit a while. I dont know the details, I hope Tony reads this and is willing to fill in the blanks in his Technique!? But I do know that it worked for his tree, so this might be a good option to consider when your Hawthorn has a baby skin! If anybody else know a good method to age the bark of a Hawthorn? Please do share it with use, so that we can poet a end to these smooth skinned Hawthorn's once and for all!!!
Hope this helps to answer your question a little?!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hans van Meer. wrote:

petit-arbre wrote:Hello,

very good tree and very good job with your hawthorn.

I have a question about bark. did you have a tips to have better bark on crataegus ?
I have heard about mouss on the trunk.

Hi petit-arbre,
sorry for the late reply to your question, .......

snip
..................
But there is hope! I know that my friend Tony Tickle had one of these smooth skinned Hawthorn's that he styled like a beautiful old giant tree. But because of the lack of old bark the tree still looked young! So he wrapped wet sphagnum moss around the trunk of the tree and kept it one there for quit a while. I dont know the details, I hope Tony reads this and is willing to fill in the blanks in his Technique!? But I do know that it worked for his tree, so this might be a good option to consider when your Hawthorn has a baby skin! If anybody else know a good method to age the bark of a Hawthorn? Please do share it with use, so that we can poet a end to these smooth skinned Hawthorn's once and for all!!!
Hope this helps to answer your question a little?!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.

Hans,

Colin Lewis has written about this (wrapping trunks with moss to help them age) in at least one of his books.


Nice tree and colors - too . Thanks for posting.

Hans van Meer. wrote:Hi everybody,
for my website I am currently working on the life story of the Hawthorn in the bellow picture. So the last two days were spend going trough the several hundreds pictures that I made over the years! And I was happy to find some pictures from when it was collected and it first styling pictures! I want to show some of them here because they show that you can make a descent Bonsai from not so good material

Below: The above Hawthorn before collecting.

Below: These Hawthorn grow in pure sand and only the longer pen roots will reach some normal ground. Because of this the tree could be dug up with my hands!

Below: After one year.

Below: A other year has past and drastic measures were needed.

Below: The tree is shortened and from now on I have to try to creat a new top and new branches.

Below:A year later! From these fresh branches my new top and new branches will be styled!

It is hard to belief that the above tree is the same as the one in the beginning of this post! I love the big transformations! It is like delayed magic, that you can only appreciate when you are confronted with a picture of the old image of this Hawthorn!
Hope you enjoyed the images?!
Cheers,
Hans van Meer.
[b]

Very nice trees, Hans. My compliments also for your choice of pots.