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.

My Flea Market Find

After several weeks of searching for a candidate succulent to create a mame bonsai, I was starting to think that I wasn't going to find what I was looking for. Sure there were lots of tiny succulents available at all the nurseries and supermarkets, but the foliage was far too bit to create a convincing tree.

Then last Sunday I was at a flea market when I came across a table full of tiny succulents. Most of them had relatively large leaves, but then I spotted this baby:

Sedum - July 2018

It's actually far smaller than it appears here (if you're viewing this post on a computer monitor, anyway) - the pot is a mere 2 inches square.

According to the seller, it's some type of Sedum, but he didn't know which and I haven't been able to identify it yet.

Now I'm really glad I decided not to chop the variegated Portulacaria I bought a few weeks ago. It's huge compared to the Sedum:

Portulacaria and Sedum - July 2018

Meanwhile, despite the fact that it's still winter here, the Portulacaria is already budding all over the place.

I can't wait to see what these little guys do when summer arrives.

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.

The Consequences of Over-Aggressive Pruning

Although I've been known to do a trunk chop from time to time (with mixed results), when I chop my trees I often err on the side of caution, cutting back to the lowest branch and waiting for back-budding before cutting back further. It slows the progress, but it's a safeguard against disaster.

When my succulent cuttings didn't sell in October 2017, however, I decided to throw caution to the wind with them, leaving only minimal foliage on one of the thinner cuttings and none at all on the rest of them. On the advice of a senior member of my club I'd done a similar chop on another thick succulent a few years back and, though the tree's recovery was slow, the result was satisfactory. I had no reason to suspect that things would turn out differently this time.

Perhaps October (late spring) wasn't the best time of year for this operation. Perhaps I did something else wrong. I just know that where the two thicker trees were concerned, things did not go to plan.

The thinner trees quickly produced masses of new growth everywhere, with only minimal die-back, allowing me to remove excess new buds within weeks.

November 2017 - not much to do on this pair

The first pair didn't need much work, but the one below was getting quite top heavy so I cut it back hard. I also removed the dead branch on the left.

November 2017 - before

November 2017 - after

The thicker trees were a lot slower to respond. By November they were showing signs of die-back on important branches, with little new growth high up and lots of tiny new buds at the base.

November 2017 - little new growth with nothing high up

Detail of the base of the above tree

November 2017 - little high growth and dying branch at base. New buds at
base not shown.

Perhaps if I'd removed some of the lowest buds I'd have got better growth higher up. Then again the trees might have died and, though they weren't trees I really wanted, I didn't want to take that chance. I hate killing trees.

By early January the thinner trees were doing really well.

January 2018

January 2018

Unfortunately, while the new buds at the base were growing strongly, the trunks of the two thicker trees had continued to decline. By now the thick branch at the base of this tree had deteriorated so badly that it snapped off with no effort, leaving a rotting hole which I attempted to carve away.

January 2018 - hole where branch had snapped off, before carving.

I was beginning to suspect that the entire trunk would be lost and developments over the past month make it seem my fears are justified.

February 2018 - carved hole, one month later.

The other one isn't looking much better, though there's no rot, so part of the trunk may survive.

January 2018

As I'm trying to cut down on the number of trees in my collection, I put the two thicker trees on my club's raffle table last Saturday. While they'll never be the trees I'd hoped they would be, in time someone may be able to develop them into decent clump style trees.

As for the remaining trees, I'm contemplating putting those on the raffle table too. Given their better condition I may do it in April, when my club is hosting an all day meeting attended by members of the other clubs in the region.

Taking My Succulents Back to Basics

So things didn't quite go as planned. Although I managed to  sell some trees at last weekend's show (my two best Junipers among them), none of my succulents sold. I think the lack of interest was due to the fact that they're so easy to propagate.

I briefly contemplated putting them on my club's raffle table next month, but I've decided not to give up that easily. Instead I cut them all back to a basic framework, leaving all but one totally devoid of foliage. One will need to be repotted at a different angle and the two in the last photo should probably be separated, but I'm not doing any of that right now.

before

after

before

after

before

after

before

after

It will be interesting to see what develops over the next 12 months. Maybe they'll be more desirable by then. Maybe a year from now I'll even want to keep some of them.

Succulent cuttings - two years later

In November 2015 I wrote about the succulent cuttings I was trying to propagate from some broken branches I found in the garden. I should have written an update a long time ago, but with so many trees to take care of I've never given them much attention. Despite that, they're all growing well.

Cutting 1

November 2015

This was intended to be a windswept tree. Unfortunately all the thin branches have broken off and all new growth is going upwards. Clearly a lot of wiring would be needed to make a windswept tree out of this one. Given the brittle nature of this species, a better option would probably be to chop the major branches back and develop a smaller tree.

October 2017

Cutting 2

November 2015

The side branch died, but the rest is growing strongly. It's time to pick a leader.

October 2017

Cutting 3

November 2015

Lots of healthy growth, also going upwards. Another one which would probably need a lot of wiring in its existing form.

October 2017

Cutting 4

November 2015

This was two cuttings in one pot. It seems I picked a leader on the right hand cutting at some stage, but for the rest nature has taken its course.

November 2017

With our club show coming up this weekend, this is my one opportunity to sell some trees this year, and, given the fact that I haven't found time for them over the last two years, I'm probably going to sell all of these. They're all larger than I like to grow my trees and I have some smaller cuttings of the same species which I'm happier to work with.

I Should Have Known Better

"Cactus" as purchased

When I bought my so-called cactus (since identified as a Pachypodium Saundersii) in the spring of 2015 my decision was made despite some serious discouragement from my mother who didn't want a plant with dangerous thorns invading her personal space.

It wasn't long before I started to wonder whether I should have deferred to her better judgement. Although I knew exactly what I planned to do with my "tree", the prospect of actually doing the job filled me with dread and I kept putting it off as if hoping that the work would do itself.

Eventually in February I took the easy way out and took it to a workshop where the hardest part was done for me.

"Cactus" pruned and planted in bonsai pot - February 2016

By the time it was safely tied into its bonsai pot my doubts had intensified and I was already contemplating the possibility of selling it or if necessary putting it on my club's raffle table. But I still held on to the hope that in time I'd learn to love it, and even took inspiration from this comment from one of my Reddit readers: "Kind of looks like bonsai from another planet."

At that stage my attention turned to gathering information about the species and working out how I was going to keep it alive during the upcoming winter. Although our winters are relatively mild, I have to protect some of my more sensitive trees from cold winds and frost, but it sounded like this one would be more tricky than most.

Meanwhile I left my "cactus" in a shady spot to recover from the trauma of root pruning but, with so many other trees to care for, I didn't pay it as much attention as I should have. About a week ago I became aware that its leaves were starting to dry up and in the days that followed I became increasingly concerned that something had gone horribly wrong.

On Thursday I saw the man who ran the workshop at which it was repotted, so I told him what had happened. He suggested I remove it from the pot and let it dry out for a couple of days. I was reluctant to handle those thorns more than necessary and put off inspecting it further until today, when I discovered that the base of the trunk had become extremely soft, a sure sign of root rot. Clearly this was the effect of over-watering.

Dead cactus - March 2016

I've seen this happen to other people's baobabs, which is one of the reasons I've never bought one. In some cases their owners have been able to save the trees by cutting off the part which has rotted and treating what's left of their tree as a cutting. I decided to see if I could do the same with this succulent, but it proved to be a lost cause. It was too far gone.

So, in answer to the question "Can I bonsai a cactus?", which I posed in my earlier post, the best I can say is perhaps with the right treatment it can be done, but I won't be trying again.

In closing it's only fair to admit that although she's never grown bonsai, sometimes Mother does know best. I certainly wish I'd taken her advice and resisted the temptation to buy a plant I knew nothing about.

Can I Bonsai a Cactus?

Although I was anything but an enthusiastic gardener as a child, I have clear memories of wanting a cactus. My parents very nearly bought me one too, but somehow between my selecting my plant and going to pay for it, I managed to get a mass of thorns stuck in my hand, and after that good sense prevailed. I never did get my cactus. Well not until recently.

I've got a few succulents I'm training as bonsai but they've never been my favourite material to work with because the branches tend to break rather easily. So I'm not sure what possessed me on the day I decided to buy this cactus with the intention of turning it into bonsai.

Cactus as purchased

I'd been to a bonsai show at a fabulous garden centre about an hour away from home and after viewing the show it was only natural that I had a good look at everything they had for sale in the nursery even though I didn't really want to add anything to a collection that is already far too big.

I rarely buy from the bonsai section at nurseries because they tend to have mediocre trees and even the pre-bonsai have really high price tags, but I love to look at what's for sale anyway. Fortunately I was able to avoid temptation in that section, so I moved on to looking at their garden trees. Still nothing took my fancy.

And then I saw that cactus with its rather tree-like structure. Those two long stems with their fat bases said twin trunk bonsai and hard as I tried to resist the temptation, as I wandered through the rest of the nursery I couldn't get it out of my mind. In a moment of madness I bought it.

Once I got it home, however, the doubts began to set in. Where was I going to keep this plant without risking someone getting hurt? I tucked it away up against a wall, behind some of my other trees. Strangely, despite my doubts, I felt my usual temptation to grow the unwanted pieces as cuttings, though I knew I shouldn't. I was torn.

Decision making has never been one of my strengths, so I took the easy way out and did what I so often do in situations like that - nothing!

That was several months ago.

Finally today, realising that autumn isn't too far off, I decided that something had to be done, so I schlepped my cactus to a club workshop, all the while wondering whether everyone would tell me I was crazy to attempt to bonsai this unusual material.

Surprisingly nobody did, though they may well have thought so. I even got help with extracting the cactus from its old pot- my helper used a thick cloth to pull it out without getting a handful of thorns.

Although I don't normally train my trees in bonsai pots, I felt I should make an exception with this one to avoid having to handle that thorny trunk more often than necessary. Perhaps it was just as well, because there was a surprise waiting for me when it came out of the pot - those two stems came from a much thicker base and exposing that base was the only way to fit it into a bonsai pot.

Cactus pruned and planted in bonsai pot - February 2016

To be honest I'm not sure I like it so much now. Seeing it in that pot has reawakened my doubts over the wisdom of buying it in the first place. Regardless, I shortened the stems to give it a more treelike appearance, and I'll see how it develops over the next few months. If I really hate it, I can always try to sell it at a club show, or if all else fails it can go on the club raffle.

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Update: When I shared this post with Reddit's bonsai group, I was told that it's not a cactus. I cross-posted to the cactus sub-Reddit and have established that it's actually a Pachypodium Saundersii.

Update 2: Unfortunately this experiment did not have a happy ending. I should have known better.

An Unexpected Find

We've had some large succulents growing in a rockery in our garden for as long as I can remember. The crassula I repotted recently started out life as a cutting from one of them about ten years ago.

Lately those succulents have been taking a lot of strain and today I discovered several broken branches lying on the ground beside one of them. They'd obviously been there for some time as the wounds had already started callousing over.

Clearly not a new break

Despite the drought we're experiencing right now, there were already signs of roots starting to form and all the smaller branches were growing upwards.

This photo shows the smaller of the two as I found it.

The smaller piece, as collected

All I did to it was put it into a pot, wiring it in place so that it can't move around too much before roots form. The fact that everything was growing in one direction makes it look like good material for a windswept tree. However I'll have to wait and see what develops because these plants are so brittle that any attempts at wiring are likely to do more harm than good.

The smaller piece, potted as found

This is the larger one as found.

The larger piece, as found

It looked like good material for a raft, but I didn't have a big enough pot to follow that route. Besides, even if I'd had one, the resulting tree would have been too big and heavy for me to handle.

Instead I chose to chop it up and grow a few trees from it.

Keeping the main piece to a manageable height meant that I had to remove the foliage, so I've got a pretty bare trunk right now. The piece on the left is actually a branch, not a separate trunk as it appears to be in this photo.

The larger piece, cut back hard

This is the top of the larger tree. It's rather wide at the moment and I may change that later. I didn't feel the need to make any design decision right now. Again, what appears to be a second trunk is actually a branch. I didn't want to plant these trees higher in their pots in case their weight caused them to fall over before they had rooted.

The top of the larger piece

I was left with two smaller pieces which I planted in one pot. I'll decide later whether to grow them together or separate them.

Two thinner pieces potted together

For now all I can do is be patient while I wait for them to develop roots. These plants grow easily from cuttings, so I'm hopeful that all will survive.

With a bit of luck it won't be too long before I see signs of new foliage.