Life without roots - the cutting that refuses to die

About 18 months ago I removed a one centimetre thick branch from one of my Acacias. As I so often do when I prune my trees, I decided to see if I could that branch to root.

All summer long it was covered in foliage, leading me to believe my effort had been successful. Then one day I accidentally pulled it out of its pot. There were no roots!

I put it back in the pot and continued to treat it as I had before. It went dormant for the winter, then produced a few new leaves in spring, and its "life" went on as before.

This morning, as I was moving some of my little trees around in search of items for my club's raffle table, it got hooked onto another tree and came out of the pot again. Still no roots.

I took it along to this afternoon's meeting and gave it to an acacia lover who seemed keen to see if he could get it to root. I hope he has better luck with it than I did.

A Tree with Dramatic Curves - 19 Months Later

Shortly after I started my blog I wrote about a little Acacia Burkei which started life as mallsai. Over a period of four years its trunkline had been changed dramatically, but it had little branching.

Some of my readers were very critical of the lack of branches and with the benefit of hindsight I probably did remove too many. Regardless, what's done is done, and I had no choice but to move forward with what was left.

September 2015

Over the last 19 months I've largely allowed this tree to do its own thing, letting the branches grow long, resulting in some significant thickening to the trunk.

March 2017 - before pruning

When I have pruned however, I've cut back hard because this tree has nasty thorns and in the limited space I have to keep it, it tends to get caught up in my other trees. My March pruning was particularly dramatic.

March 2017 - after pruning

I hadn't planned to prune it again before winter, but its growth over the past month was strong, and some of the upward growth was unnecessary.

April 2017 - before trim

While I was trying to organise my greenhouse ahead of winter, I decided to give it one more minor trim.

April 2017 - after trim

Here's a 360° view:



Ideally I'd like one or two more branches between the first and second branch.

After the March pruning the tree put out one new branch here:

Unwanted new growth

Unfortunately it was in an unsuitable position, so I was forced to remove it. However it gives me hope that a better option will present itself next summer.

Can I grow bonsai indoors?

I've been hanging around Reddit's bonsai group for a while now and, despite my early reservations after receiving some pretty harsh criticism, I'm finding it a really good place to learn.

A topic that comes up for a lot of debate there is whether it's possible to grow bonsai indoors. Some people insist that it can't be done, while others are more open-minded about the idea. What is certain is that some species cannot survive for long indoors and many newbies are in for a shock when they discover that their recently-acquired Juniper bonsai is dead or dying because they were misled into thinking that it could be kept on their desk.

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I confess that when I first became interested in bonsai in around the year 2000, I too wanted to grow my little trees indoors. I knew very little about plants in general back then, but I'd already come across a book about indoor bonsai, so I had no reason to doubt that it could be done. One of my problems was that there weren't too many sunny spots inside my house and I hadn't heard of grow-lamps back then. My early attempts were consigned to the sunniest spot I could find - in the kitchen.

My first two trees were an Azalea and a Ficus, and with the ignorance of a beginner, the first thing I did was plant them in bonsai pots. Neither survived very long. I can't say for sure that it was being indoors that killed the Azalea as I'm sure I must have made other mistakes too. The Ficus, however, certainly could have survived inside if I'd cared for it properly, and I know that its death was entirely due to stupidity on my part.

I was not deterred, but refrained from putting my next batch of trees into bonsai pots and didn't even put much effort into styling them. In fact they spent their early years living with me as house plants. I still have two Ficuses I bought during that period. They now live outside and are slowly being trained into bonsai.

Another early acquisition which survived my early abuse was an Acacia Burkei, a tree which it has always been claimed needs to be outdoors. I've proved that they can survive on a sunny windowsill, but keeping mine there had disastrous consequences, if only because I gave it minimal care. Actually that tree did a lot more than survive, it thrived there... but in so doing the branches grew through the burglar bars covering the windows and when I finally wanted to move the tree, I was forced to cut off all the branches and start over. Had the tree been a Juniper, that would have been a death sentence. My Acacia now lives outdoors too and has developed some decent new branching.

Everything changed when I joined my club in late 2007. That was when I started to realise that even trees which can survive indoors are better off being outside when the weather allows.

Shortly after joining the club I started an experiment to see how keeping a tree indoors affected its growth. I started with these two young Ficus Benjamina cuttings:

Two cuttings at start of experiment

The cutting in the green pot was kept outdoors, while the one in the red pot was kept in my kitchen in rather poor light. After six months the difference is very visible in terms of both size and leaf quality. The leaves look so different that they don't even look like the same species.

Two cuttings at end of experiment - five months later

When the experiment ended I attempted to put some shape into the indoor tree, but in its weakened state the shock of wiring was too much for it and it died. The outdoor tree was with me for several years before I sold it at our club show. To the best of my knowledge it is still alive.

A Tree with Dramatic Curves

I love visiting garden centres and scratching around to see if I can find any suitable bonsai material. I always visit the bonsai section, but prefer not to buy trees that somebody else has styled, so once I’ve seen what’s on offer, I usually move on to the regular trees and shrubs in the hope of finding raw material that I can style to my own taste.

The tree I’m discussing today is an indigenous South African tree, species Acacai Burkei (Black money thorn).  It was bought on a rare occasion when I broke my own rule about not buying ready-made bonsai. This one didn’t come from a garden centre though, it came from a supermarket. Although I wasn’t planning to buy anything, when I saw it I knew I had to have it.

This photo, taken on 13 December 2011, shows what it looked like when I bought it.

On close inspection, I soon realised that my tree wasn’t all it could be. That nice curvy trunk wasn’t being shown to its best advantage lying flat on the ground. On the advice of a bonsai friend I moved the tree into a bigger pot and gently pushed a small rock under the trunk to prop it up in the desired position.  I also wired a couple of branches to prevent everything from growing straight upwards. After that I left it to grow wild as its structure adapted to life at a strange new angle.

Then in December 2013, almost two years to the day since I bought the tree, I cut back a lot of new growth to reveal the beginnings of the structure I was after.

In April 2014, after another period of uncontrolled growth, the tree was in serious need of another pruning.

By this time the trunk had set at the desired angle and I was finally able to remove the rock. I also removed a low branch which was spoiling the design. Judging by the photo angle it appears I also had a temporary change of heart as to what was to be the front of the tree.

By January 2015 the tree had grown bigger than ever.

It was at this stage that I made the cut which will define the tree’s future, removing the straight part growing upwards and making the new trunk grow back over itself. I also reverted to my original choice of front.

This is how it looks now, in September 2015, after another haircut and a bit of wiring. The final structure is starting to show. It’s not ready to go back into a bonsai pot yet, but it’s getting there.