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.

Sticks in Pots

The olive trees commonly used for bonsai in South Africa are Olea Europaea subsp. Africana, often referred to as the wild olive. Its fruit are much smaller than the average olive and aren't suitable for eating so, when one of my olive trees started producing fruit two or three years ago, I didn't bother to pick them. In due course they ripened and fell unnoticed into the surrounding pots where they took root. Since then I've been finding olive seedlings popping up everywhere.

I always move those seedlings into small pots and just leave them to do their own thing until they get big enough for me to experiment with. I know these "sticks in pots" will never make quality bonsai, but experimenting can be fun, and maybe I'll learn something that will help me with my better trees later on.

Today I decided to play with a few of those little trees.

These two were the first ones I found a couple of years back. They were planted in one pot to save space, and I've decided to leave them together.

Two olive saplings

Though they're each thinner than a pencil I decided to do a trunk chop and see what develops.

Two olive saplings after chop

Right now I'm looking at the possibility of creating a tiny twin trunk formal upright. Another option is a small twin trunk literati. Time will tell which is the better option.

The next tree I worked on is a bit younger and a lot thinner.

Olive sapling with badly wired curves

As the trunk was still nice and flexible I decided to wire some big curves in an attempt to create a horai style tree.

Olive sapling showing bad attempt to wire curves

I hadn't planned to do any pruning yet as I wanted the tree to thicken substantially first but, as a result of over-ambition combined with some really lazy wiring, I snapped the trunk.

Close up of damage to olive sapling

It's possible that the break would still have healed, but the tree would always have had a weakness at that spot, so I decided to make an unplanned cut, leaving me with this:

Olive sapling after damage was removed

I hope it survives today's abuse. It certainly won't be fattening up any time soon though.

This was my third attempt at horai, trying to copy the styling from a diagram in Deborah Koreshoff's book "Bonsai - Its Art, Science, History and Philosophy". Neither of my previous attempts worked out according to plan either.

Another young olive tree I looked at today once had a natural curve right near the base and I had hoped that it would turn into an interesting feature. Unfortunately I didn't think to push a stick into the gap to keep it open as the tree thickened. It's too late now because the gap has closed up, leaving an ugly kink instead.

Ugly kink on an olive sapling

I'm not sure what I'll be able to do with this one, so for now I'll probably just let it grow and see if that kink becomes less conspicuous in time.

I've got several more of these that I haven't worked on yet. I might do a bit of wiring on some of them but that will have to wait for another day. I've got loads of better trees that are begging for my attention so I need to work on some of those first.

---

I'd like to end off with a little good news. I managed to catch the grasshopper I wrote about yesterday. It seems he has a damaged leg so he hadn't moved very far overnight. I've relocated him to an area where there are no bonsai.

I also managed to find out his name - Elegant Grasshopper (Zonocerus elegans). It sounds like he's quite a destructive fellow, so I was lucky he did no noticeable damage to my trees.

Decisions, decisions

I apologise for harping on about my fig tree, but decision-making has never been one of my strengths and I really feel like I need to commit to a front before I go any further with its development.

When last I wrote about it,  I had just done a drastic pruning and defoliation after I repotted it, ending with a naked tree that looked like this:

December 2015 - after pruning and defoliation

Over the last month the tree has put out quite a bit of new foliage on some of the branches, though it still has a few bare patches. But there was enough there for me to feel I could take it to another meeting and ask for more opinions from members of my club, some of whom had not been at the December meeting. Unfortunately the more opinions I got, the more confused I became. Of those who were prepared to offer an opinion, no two people seemed to pick the same angle and I came away with five different fronts to choose from.

Since then I've spent quite a while examining the tree from all angles and even shot a video of it slowly rotating to try to get a more three dimensional view than any photo could show.



After making a few slight adjustments to the angles suggested by my fellow club members, I eventually cut my options down to the three I've marked in the video.

Front 1

Potential front 1

I know this looks nothing like traditional bonsai, but I like the way most of the curves are visible, while the one bend I dislike is hidden away at the back of the tree. The base also looks thicker from this angle than from any other. Some branches will have to be removed, but the same applies to any front I ultimately choose.

Front 2

Potential front 2

The bend I dislike is more visible from this side, but still doesn't look too bad. Watching the video back, I'd probably rotate the tree slightly anti-clockwise if I went with this option.

Front 3

Potential front 3

The more I look at this one the less convinced I become that it's one I'd really consider. The angle at which the curve comes back to the front is problematic because parts of the rear section are visible while others are hidden. And in a two-dimensional photo, they look more like straight lines than like curves anyway.

Branches

As the focus of this tree is on the curvy trunk, it was suggested that I remove all the branches and only grow foliage at the apex. It's an option I'm considering, but the one negative is that it will limit the tree's ability to produce fruit, and I really had hoped that it would give me a fig or two to enhance its appearance in the future.

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.