Starting a Large Portulacaria Bonsai from Nursery Stock

I never meant to buy anything.

When I stopped at the nursery about 10 days ago, I was just trying to burn a little time before meeting a friend at a nearby restaurant. I'm supposed to be cutting down on the number of trees in my collection, not adding more.

Everything started off well. The trident maples had decent bases, but they were about 10 feet tall with no low branches, so they were easy to ignore. And the small Portulacarias weren't the least bit tempting. I've already got a few and I tend to neglect them. So much so that I nearly lost one to root rot last year. I've reached the stage where I try not to buy anything unless it's a little bit special, like the variegated Portulacaria I bought in July.

But when I passed the big Portulacarias in another section of the nursery, everything changed. I'm not aware of ever seeing them that size before - well not unless they were growing in the ground anyway. Even so I nearly passed them by because the bags of soil they were planted in were so big that I felt sure I wouldn't be able to lift them. But I tried lifting one and was surprised to find that it was a lot lighter than it looked.

I couldn't buy it though. Not that day. I couldn't leave it standing in the car, visible for all the world to see, while I was at the restaurant.

It was three days before I was able to return. Luckily my chosen plant was still there because the others had much thinner trunks. Well all except one, and it turned out that I couldn't lift that one.

And so I came home with this huge plant which, in its bag, reached to just below my chin.

October 2018 - as purchased

I couldn't even contemplate putting it into a training pot until I'd removed all the excess growth.

October 2018 - after first rough pruning

At this stage all the branches on the left were in a straight line and I knew most of them would have to go, but I decided to leave my final selection until the tree was in a pot, planted at the correct height. A wise decision because, by the time the highest roots were exposed, the tree appeared a couple of inches taller.

October 2018 - still waiting for its final cut

I didn't discover that until a few days later though. Given its size I decided to get some help with the root work at my club's meeting.

In addition to adding height to the tree, removing the top layer of soil also exposed a couple of branches with their own roots, giving me two extra (much smaller) plants for my money.

October 2018 - two branches with their own roots

Once the tree was safely potted, it was time for the final branch selection. I was happy to find that several club members agreed with my decision to reduce the height a little further. Once I'd cut back to my chosen leader, the right branch was perfectly positioned on the bend. After removing the handlebars and the low branch coming straight to the front, I was left with just two branches. For now.

October 2018 - after final pruning

Who knows what options may present themselves when new growth appears?

It's unfortunate that the higher branch is the thicker of the two, but hopefully if I let the thinner one grow and keep the thicker one short, it won't take too long to correct that fault.

One last photo, just to show the size of the tree:

October 2018 - soda can for size

In addition to the two branches with roots, I've kept a lot of cuttings. If they all root, I'll have a not-so-small forest of Portulacarias of various sizes growing in my bonsai area. Maybe in a year or so I'll be able to sell some of them and recover the cost of the parent tree.

Let It Grow

I shouldn't be buying more trees right now. Well not unless they're really special anyway. I certainly shouldn't be buying young sticks in pots that are nowhere near ready for styling. And that certainly wasn't my plan when I started looking at the tiny succulents that all the supermarkets are selling.

What I was hoping to find was a candidate for an "instant mame", something like the one I saw in a recent Reddit post.

Yesterday I found this little guy at a flea market.

Although the stem is far from woody, it wouldn't take very long to turn it into a tiny tree about half its current height.

I've never seen a variegated Portulacaria before though, so I've decided to let this one grow.

For now the search for a tiny mame continues. I have my heart set on a succulent only because I'm terrified to put my smallest tree into a smaller pot in case it dries out.

Crassula vs Portulacaria

Inspired by a recent discussion at Reddit.

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.

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:

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.

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.

 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:

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.

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.

Back From the Dead

With so many trees to care for I have some which have been sitting in my bonsai area for years receiving little more attention than what is required to meet their need for food and water. It's for this reason that I've sold most of the Junipers which entered my life when I participated in my club's "New Talent" competition.

Among the other species which I'm becoming increasingly reluctant to work on are my succulents, among them a Portulacaria which has been with me longer than most of my other trees, and longer than I've been a member of my club.

When I first acquired it my plan was to create a cascade and I wired it accordingly. But I was forced to change that plan after a massive hail storm in late 2007 which, in addition to damaging what was then a small collection of trees, broke thirteen windows in our house. Remarkably all my trees survived.

Over the past ten years the Portulacaria has been to a couple of workshops and was taking shape quite nicely at one stage, but as my collection grew it found itself sitting neglected on the lower shelf in my greenhouse (where I'd put it to protect it from further hail damage). And so I failed to notice a Melaleuca seedling which planted itself in the same pot as the Portulacaria. By the time I noticed it, it was already towering over the little Portulacaria. Of course I knew it needed to be moved to its own pot but there was always something more important to take care of. And so it kept growing until I recently realised that it was now towering over me as well.

My first thought was to cut the Melaleuca back to a more convenient height (as I did with this one last year) and put the two trees back into my greenhouse until next spring before separating them, but when I gave it a bit more thought I realised that the wait would only make a really tricky job even more difficult. Although it was the wrong time of year (summer in South Africa) in the middle of December I decided that separating them was a risk I had to take.

December 2017

First I cut the Melaleuca back to half its height, then, with much trepidation I pulled the trees out of their little pot, anticipating a tough time trying to untangle their roots. I had no idea what lay in store for me! The Melaleuca roots were long, thick and inflexible, growing in circles around the inside of the pot. I had no choice but to remove most of them.

By the time I was able to separate the two trees, each was left with only a fairly small root ball.

Portulacaria straight after separation - December 2017

Succulents are tough so I was convinced that the Portulacaria would be fine but, despite having reduced the size of the Melaleuca so much, I was not too optimistic about its chance of survival.

Melaleuca straight after separation - December 2017

My fears only grew when, within a few days, all the old foliage started wilting.

A few weeks later all the foliage had turned brown and I could see no signs of new growth. I was convinced the tree was dead.

Melaleuca looking dead - January 2018

However, I'm never in a rush to throw away my dead trees just in case I'm wrong, so I decided to move it from its shady spot to the area where I've put some of my other dead trees - a spot in which it's been getting only a little morning sun and a rough sprinkling of water.

I hadn't given it much more thought until today when, while watering, I noticed a spot of green near the top of the tree. I felt sure it was my imagination, but on closer inspection I discovered this small cluster of leaves.

New buds - January 2018

There are also several smaller green buds forming lower down on the trunk. Clearly it's not dead after all.

Thankfully all I ever wanted was part of the trunk, so the loss of the branches isn't going to be a problem.

Now I need to find a more suitable spot where it can continue its recovery.

Photo progression of this tree as it recovers can be found here.