I've said before that I'm not a huge fan of succulents for bonsai, largely because I find they're terribly brittle. A few of mine have suffered serious damage due to severe hail.
In my ongoing (and largely unsuccessful) attempt to reduce my prebonsai collection to a more manageable size, I've given away several succulents including the four I propagated from a couple of huge branches I found in my garden in late 2015. However I still have several succulents - two varieties of Crassula and a few small Portulacarias. Some of them may even make decent bonsai one day... if I can find time to give them the attention they deserve.
For this post I've decided to discuss three plants of different varieties, each with its own story to tell.
This Crassula is the oldest and largest of the three. I propagated it from a small cutting some time before I joined my club, so I'd guess it's about 13 years old.
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| Big Crassula - July 2018 |
It got badly hit by hail in late 2007, forcing me to cut it back to a stump and effectively start all over again. For years it was living in a colander which was far too small for it, stunting its growth, but I didn't do anything about it until another tree popped up in the same pot. For the most part I've just left it to do its own thing but it had one hard pruning a couple of years ago, and it's been growing rather slowly since then.
The bark is ageing really slowly too, and I sometimes wonder whether it will ever look like an old tree.
Second is a different species of Crassula.
This one was started from a slightly larger cutting in 2008. It suffered some serious abuse early on.
I took the cutting just after I'd attended my first BRAT meeting. One of the speakers had mentioned a method of developing nebari by planting a young tree through the hole in a CD, the idea being that, as the tree fattens, new roots will develop above the CD and they'll be forced to grow outwards rather than down. In time the roots growing below the CD will no longer be required.
I didn't have any suitable trees to try his method on, so I decided to plant the cutting through the hole and see what happened. Being a succulent it rooted easily and was soon growing strongly.
A couple of years later I decided it was time to remove the lower roots, but I was in for a shock. It turned out that the top roots had actually grown up around the sides of the CD and there were none growing from the upper trunk, so I was left with a tree with no roots and a nice root system with no tree. I knew the tree would root again, but would Crassula grow from a root cutting? I had to try.
The simple answer is "yes". I soon found myself with two trees. This is what the one grown from the roots looks like today:
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| Small Crassula - July 2018 |
While the tree grown from the top section was quite straight and boring, this one developed a bit of movement and much better nebari . The bark is also looking quite interesting. However there is bad reverse taper so I'm tempted to cut back to the first branch, increasing the movement and taper.
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| Small Crassula - detail of nebari and bark |
I gave the straighter tree away a long time ago.
The Portulacaria below is recovering from a near disaster. It was also grown from a cutting several years ago and was growing strongly without any work ever being done to it. About a year ago I was planning to turn it into a semi-cascade but never got around to it. Until November 2017, that is.
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| Dying Portulacaria - November 2017 |
When I finally took it out of my greenhouse to start styling it, I discovered that it was loose in the pot and when I tried to lift it, the whole tree came away with no roots. Clearly a case of root rot. Could I revive it?
Before replanting it, I cut it back to something more manageable:
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| Dying Portulacaria - no roots |
I repotted it in river sand and hoped that the drier conditions would help it to root again.
It's still alive and growing slowly. And despite its poor health, I find the bark more interesting than that of the big Crassula.
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| Portulcaria, July 2018 - recovering slowly |
Hopefully there are new roots growing in the sand, but it will be some time before I have the courage to look.
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