The Grapefruit Flower

In February 2019 I posted a photo of a grapefruit with seeds growing inside the fruit.

Thirty months later it's time for an update.

This is the smaller of my two grapefruit seedlings showing off it's first flower.

The larger one has none.

In fact of all the citrus seeds I've planted over the years this is the first one ever to grow a flower.

Even the lemon tree I planted in the garden never flowered. Eventually I decided to move it back into a pot in the hope of using it for bonsai, but sadly it didn't survive the move.

Though citrus trees aren't ideal bonsai material, I have other citruses which have spent their whole lives in small pots, and I'm persisting with those. I feel compelled to because it was a clementine seedling which first ignited my passion for bonsai.

I don't usually grow trees from seed but...

When the seeds grew roots while they were still inside the grapefruit, I couldn't bring myself to kill them.

Naturally Stunted

This tree has never been in a bigger pot than its current home.

October 2018

It hasn't been repotted since it was a seedling either.

That's not the way I usually do things, but when a tree is too vigorous, stunting its growth has its benefits.

The tree above is the smaller of two Coral trees (Erythrina lysistemon) which I grew from seed about 8 years ago.

It's never been to a workshop, unlike its big brother which has been to a couple.

When I took the bigger one to its first workshop a few years ago, I felt compelled to get it out of its small pot because it kept growing so tall and top heavy that the wind was continually blowing it over. I took two pots to the workshop and was advised to put it in the larger pot. That's a decision I've come to regret because it grows much too quickly for my liking.

In April (autumn) I gave it a hard pruning to get it short enough to fit under frost cloth for winter. No styling was attempted at that time.

April 2018 - after rough pruning

I hadn't touched it since then and by last week the new growth was totally out of control.

October 2018 - six months growth

I decided to take it to a workshop, primarily because I knew that someone there wanted the thick cuttings. But first I had to remove most of the new growth so that it would fit in my car.

Cut back to a manageable size

After proper pruning it looks like this.

October 2018 - after pruning

I'll shorten everything further when I get some back budding.

Now I need to see that I keep its growth under control.

The little one was shortened in April too, but had produced much finer growth over the last six months.

October 2018 - before pruning

It needed a lot less work.

October 2018 - after pruning

Note that the fatness of both trees at soil level is pretty similar though the larger tree has gentler taper. The smaller one has a large bulge at the base, but that has been there since it was a seedling, so I'm not sure a bigger pot would have changed that. It also has no visible nebari, something that will have to be taken care of when I finally decide to move it to a more suitable pot.

But I fear that will have to wait until next year because it's a bit late in the season to repot it now.

Unsuitable Material for Bonsai

When I first became interested in bonsai (long before I joined my club), it was with the expectation of keeping my trees indoors. This idea seemed perfectly feasible given the fact that one of the first bonsai books I bought was "Indoor Bonsai" by Paul Lesniewicz.

Unfortunately my first attempts soon ended in disaster. I even managed to kill my first Ficus really quickly. But I kept trying. And an idea from that book which seemed like an attractive option was propagating my own trees from the seeds of some of the fruit I ate.

My first attempt was planting citrus seeds. I soon had two little lemon trees growing on my bedroom windowsill. However after the more attractive one died, I aborted that experiment and planted the surviving one in the garden where it lived happily for several years before the bugs attacked it. Seeing it shrinking due to die back, my idea of turning it into a bonsai tree was revived and a couple of years ago I asked our garden service to dig it up so that I could move it into a training pot. Sadly it didn't survive the transplant and I now have a dead stump for which I'd like to find a creative use.

Dead lemon tree

I still have a couple of smaller citrus trees living in my bonsai area, but I don't have much hope of ever turning those into decent bonsai either and have made no serious attempt at styling them. They're over a decade old now, so sentiment prevents me from giving them away.

My next attempt was propagating a litchi tree. It didn't take me long to realise that the foliage was totally unsuited to bonsai, but I've kept the tree in the hope that it will give me fruit one day.

I also tried guavas, but I gave those away a long time ago.

I still have a couple of apple saplings which were another bad choice. I've since bought a couple of crab apple trees which I'm working on, but I've yet to see any fruit or even flowers on those. But I know that they're decent bonsai material so styling is my first priority for now. And I really hope they will get fruit when the time is right.

By the time I decided to plant a mango seed I had no delusions that it would ever make bonsai, but I couldn't resist the temptation to grow my own mangoes. I've actually got two trees now because a couple of years later I found a seed which had already rooted inside the mango and I didn't have the heart to throw it away if it wanted to live that badly.

My older mango tree

My older tree is approximately seven years old now and I was delighted to see that it's starting to flower for the first time.

Mango flower buds

Sadly I've read that it's best to remove the first season's flowers. I'm reluctant to do so, but the health of the tree must be my first priority, so I guess I'll be waiting for fruit for a little while longer.

Meanwhile I do have one fruit tree which I'm hoping will eventually make decent bonsai - a cherry tree.

Cherry tree

This was one of my most difficult attempts at propagating trees from fruit - of nine seeds I planted only two grew and one was an albino (with white leaves) which died as soon as I moved it into the sun.