Shaggy Larch Post - Complete Defoliation?

Gents,
In regards to the Shaggy Larch Post.
Your thoughts on a complete defoliation as mentioned in NL's book.....this technique seems to shorten the needle length nicely?
Roger, this might assist in your western larch?
Gman

being a deciduous conifer, defoliation of a larch (partial or complete) seems a fairly reasonable proposition. As there are strong and weak areas, I'd personally go with a partial or selective approach. This is borne out by a couple studies I found:

http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1656/1092-6194(2001)008%5B0319%3AWPJLAB%5D2.0.CO%3B2?journalCode=nena

Speaking specifically to the Western Larch: http://www.andykerr.net/Larch/LarchNatHist.html (offline references cited) Although there is some ambiguity as to the exact meaning of "repeated defoliation" in that article. Whether it means more than once per growing season or more than two consecutive years is unclear. Again, partial or selective defoliation seems to be the safer path.

I can't imagine anything good would come from combining Nick's defoliation with Vance's pinching (unless perhaps alternating years?) and "foot binding" ( http://mababonsai.org/pages/wood_larch1.html ) as it would likely stress the heck out of the tree. Then again, perhaps I'd be delightfully surprised, so maybe I need to try it on a few trees and find out.

Kindest~
-d

here is the offending tree. This is my first proper tree so please don't be harsh

Looks like it is off to a great start. I wouldn't say it looks too shaggy, compared to some of mine that are in development. Don't forget that many of the trees that you see in photo's, without anything for scale, can be deceptively large for bonsai. This can make the needle clusters appear smaller than they actually are and thus neater.

Kev Bailey wrote:Looks like it is off to a great start. I wouldn't say it looks too shaggy, compared to some of mine that are in development. Don't forget that many of the trees that you see in photo's, without anything for scale, can be deceptively large for bonsai. This can make the needle clusters appear smaller than they actually are and thus neater.

thanks, although this alarms me slightly - a great start? Blimey. I thought it was nearly the completed article .

Gman, defoliation is certianly an option. I defoliated one section of the tree a few years ago before I really started the final styling just to see how it would react. I don't remember for sure, but I think the second set of needles may have come in somewhat smaller than the first growth. I kind of think they didn't come in dramatically smaller because I would have remembered that.

One thing, as Nick noted in his book, defoliating a larch of any size is a long and tedious process - one has to pretty much pull each needle individually, you can't just grab a whole rosette of needles and pull because you don't want to risk breaking off the spur. I might try it again sometime on that L. occidentalis when I have a day with nothing better to do.

Roger