Pine update

This one was collected spring 2009. It has been growing very slowly and I was afraid that it would die. It has lost a major branch since my last post about it, but it still has enough branches to create a beautiful and very powerful image. It needs more time to recover from collection so it will be left alone probably for many years untill it has regained its full strength.

Another new spruce

This spruce was collected august 2009 and has grown very well this summer. I like the slender trunks and the old rugged bark.

Honeysuckle update

This one was collected spring 2009 and repottet spring 2010. I have posted images of it before. Since my last update on it i have cut off a big branch on the right side in the first image, I havn't worked on the cut surface yet but will do so this autumn. I think removing that branch has improved the image a lot. It still needs a lot of work and refinement but it has very good potential.

New honeysuckle

This is my mest honeysuckle. It was collected this spring and has been growing like crazy all summer. I have cut back the new growth several times and it rmifies very quickly. This species can produce a refined image in 5 years from a stump. When the leaves fall off I will start working on the tree.

It had to be done....

Finally it happened, Rune got fused with mother nature.

Blue honeysuckle

Here is a very small blue honeysuckle (Lonicera caerulea) was collected last year and has a very interesting trunk, with a spiraling live vein and nicely textured dead wood. The only workdone so far is repotting, a little work on tghe dead wood and cutting back new growth. It will be shaped this autumn.

Mountain ash update

This tree was collected spring 2009, the first photo is just after collecting



Here it is after one year of growth, before any work was done


This pic is fro today, I worked on the deadwood and wired it last autum and now it's time to wire it again


And here it is after a second wiring. It's not often one sees a good Sorbus aucuparia so I'm happy about this one. They are slow to develop, but in time it will ramify better, and hopefully it will put out flowers some day.

Yet another new pine

This pine was collected spring 2010






The lower part of it is very impressive, in the future I will reduce the hight and use only the first few branches to create the crown.

Spruce part 2

I always have to put collected spruces into really big boxes because I need to keep big rootballs to increase the chanse of getting enough hairroots to make the tree survive.



This one has survived and will be bare rooted next spring and put into a proper pot. I consider it essential to bare root the spruces during the first repot because they grow in very wet, bogsoil that breaks down to a mudlike structure after a few years. The spruces always responds to this procedure by putting out vigorous new growth. But I need to keep them in a shady position and they need a lot of moisture so I use small (1-3 mm) particles in the new substrate.

Spruce part 1

This spruce was collected last year. It had been prepared for a few years by fertilizing it a few times every year.



In spite the fact that it grew in this almost mudlike and very wet bogsoil I could see some new hairroots in the top soil





The rootball is quite heavy due to all the water it contains. It's much more labourous to collect spruces than pines...

new spruce

This spruce was collected in august last year. It grew on a rock so I got a compact rootball. That is very rare for spruces (at least where I collect them)


It has a lot of movement in the trunk. It has grown well this year so next spring it will be repotted into a proper pot.

Samabucus racemosa

The common English name is red elderberry.
I have never seen one as bonsai before and there might very well be good reasons for that ; - )

I found this one this spring, and collected it because of the interesting bark and shape of the trunk


In the wild the growth is very coarse and the leaves are big.

It put out new growth everywhere, but like in the wild the growth was very coarse, the branches thickens very quickly and the diameter after one years free growth can be 2 cm, so they need to be cut back several times during summer to keep the growth under controll, and you need to wire the brances the first year they appear or they will not be bendable anymore.

This is what it looked like after the first shaping. I started to pinch back the new growth as soon as it started to grow to get better ramification. It is just an experiment and we'll see in the future if it's possible to develop decent ramification and to reduce the leafe size. The tree is about 75 cm tall.

It produces lots of red berrys in clusters in the wild, it stays on after the leafs fall off in autumn so that might be a nice feature if i can get it to produce berries in the future. ....

twisted pine

This pine was collected spring 2009




This spring I repotted it and changed the planted angle. I removed all the old soil and it responded by growing very vigorously. Next yer it will be ready for the first styling...

Salix

I got this salix purpurea 'nana' from a nursery last autumn. I posted something about it on the blog last year. It has developed very quicly. New shoots popped out everywhere and I need to thin it out a lot when the leaves fall off.