Bonsai tree: Coming Soon: North American Bonsai at the International Bonsai Symposium

This splendid Japanese maple by Bill Valavanis is from the cover of International Bonsai’s special Maple Issue.
Larch, cedar, bald cypress, buttonwood, Rocky mountain juniper will be all featured September 10-12 in Rochester NY. Meet some excellent bonsai artists and teachers, take a couple workshops and go home happy (visit International Bonsai for details).
…the gallery book North American Bonsai is now double discounted at Stone Lantern. So is The 1st U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition Album.

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Bonsai tree: Hemlock group

This Mountain hemlock has been one of those intriguing trees that is so big at 65″ it is almost more of a conversation piece than a bonsai. And yet thinner trunked trees can be considerably taller and still ‘work’ as bonsai. I collected it about 1 1/2 years ago, and put it in pumice in a cedar box that was sort of cobbled together in an effort to have it appear to be on a slope of a hill.
Having dreamed about that hill for a while, at the March 2010 Seasonal we put it on a temporary plywood slab and erected a muck dam and at least got the footings of this unstyled tree underway. The chopsticks drilled into the plywood was a spur of the moment idea. When I woke up that morning I had no idea how to keep that muck wall overhang from falling over.
It may be ready for styling this fall, although I’ve always felt it would be a very light styling. There is already so much of a natural and wild and windy feeling about this group that I won’t be doing much.
Here’s a bit of a photo essay:
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Crafty Nick’s Crazy Cedar

You like unconventional? Crazy? How about daring and masterful? Notice how the color and design of the pot plays with the wild deadwood and the small touch of moss on the left mirrors the foliage. Just another bonsai from left fild by crafty old Nick Lenz, master left fielder, author, and preminent master of cedars, larches and other collected North American gems. This photo is from North American Bonsai (American Bonsai Society – compiled and edited by Martin Schmalenberg), now on sale at Stone Lantern.

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Cedar bonsai

There are some types of cedar, that can become a bright bonsai indeed. The most precious ones come from the Cyprus Island and the Himalaya mountain ridge. On the one hand the are marked up by the size of the needles, by another hand by coloring and look. In the nature, tall (to sixty meters in height) trees with very thin extended needles are initially adapted for low winter temperatures and strong solar radiation in the summer. Needles grow directly from under barks of branches. In fructification of its cone in the thin, compactly located plates form fruits of the oval form with very easy winged seeds. Before I discuss what cedar is, perhaps I'd better clarify what cedar isn't. Eastern red cedar isn't a Cedrus at all, it's a juniper - Juniperus virginiana (which, BTW, is the "cedar" used as fragrant red cedar woodwork). Eastern white cedar and Western red cedar aren't Cedrus either, they're arborvitae - Thuja occidentalis and Thuja plicata, respectively. Incense cedar, Calocedrus decurrens, is close, but no cigar. Japanese cedar is Cryptomeria japonica.

Caring in vegetation period

The cedar perfectly adapts to any place, preferring solar, well aired corners with moderate humidity of environment. It is not necessary to fill in a substratum, completely to dry it before repeated watering, reducing a quantity of water and watering frequency in process of a cold snap. The soil should be well drained and sated sour clay. Fertilizers are brought as spring (for powerful growth of new runaways), as in the autumn (with a view of increase of frost resistance of a plant in the winter). The change is made strictly in time from three till five years. Roots are cut off on one third of length, but the earth which has stuck to a rhizome does not leave.

Styling the bonsai

Pruning works spend on new runaways as in the spring, and in the summer, deleting dry branches in a crone. Any care of cedar needles it is not required, except constant and all-the-year-round cleaning of needles falling down on soil.

The best time wiring a cedar is autumn. Fixing by a wire proceeds approximately one year. At a thickening of a trunk and branches not to suppose their damage.

Illness and wreckers

Caterpillars of a silkworm and bugs-grinders are the basic wreckers of a cedar. You need to destroy caterpillars operatively at detection or to sprinkle special insecticide if they have already generated a cocoon. When struggling with bugs-grinders is necessary to spray all tree in the end of winter. Identical work should be managed in the spring for destruction of adult individuals of a bug-grinder. From illnesses it is necessary to avoid some root white decay which is distinguished on the whitish stains appearing at the basis of a trunk, and at the started disease on slightly swelled up a little kidneys and loss of needles at a crone. Sometimes during the autumn period small fungi with a yellow scaly hat are observed.

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