The member that I asked the critique or help from is advanced; I consider my skills somewhere in the middle, having gained a lot of YouTube knowledge. He is part of a bonsai club in northern Virginia and gives workshops up there. He is very good. In other words, I appreciate his feedback. His first remark was that based on the circumference of the trunk, “the tree should be approximately 4 inches tall to be in proportion.” My tree right now is two feet tall. While I agreed with him, if I want a finished tree; however, this tree is in development and hopefully by letting it grow tall, I can get some girth on the trunk. Cutting the tree that low is scarry to me. I do not see any leaf scars down there and I am not sure if it would back-bud or die when cut that low. I am not sure if I am prepared to risk it.
The next discussion point was movement in the trunk. My tree has a double trunk that are both about as straight as arrows. The discussion was about using very heavy copper wire to put some movement in the trunk. The following discussion ensued. A lot of bonsai artists including my advisor likes to put in exaggerated movement into trees to represent the age of the tree, ravaged by time and the weather. They also reflect the artist’s ability to work with the plants. I am not sure if I am a huge fan of all these trees with strange twists and turns that all these bonsai “artists” put in their trees. One of the YouTube channels I watch is the Bonsai Zone by Nigel Saunders. Nigel used to be a model builder, and his philosophy is (as I understand it) to create trees that are a copy of what they look like in nature. Well, I hardly see a contorted twisted willow oak in nature. My mentor for the day pulled up some pictures of mature willow oaks on his phone and had to agree. Trunks are mostly straight, and the canopies are brought.
Personally, I have a few trees that I am twisting and turning, but most of mine are clip and grow, like Nigel. Mine are mostly small. While I would love some larger specimen, being almost 70, my time to grow and lift large trees may be limited. Being a naturalist, a biologist, I like to recreate nature and walking in the woods, the day after the meeting I noticed that 90% of the trees had arrow straight trunks. Some of the understory trees were twisted: maples, ironwood, pawpaw, hornbeam, etc. They were looking for light, those sun flecks.
Naturally, making a forest like bonsai with multiple trees, we need to start thinking about making trees with relatively straight trunks. That is what we see in nature, the competition for light. But then, are there twin trunk oaks? I actually have a triple trunk oak in my front yard, and one of the tallest oaks on my favorite trails behind my home is a twin-trunked red oak. I did learn something. I am not yet going to cut off the leader (which I had planned to do) in the hope to develop a thicker trunk. Moreover, I am going to plant it on a rock!
All together it was a win-win meeting for me. I really encourage everyone to join a bonsai club, if you grow then and have not joined one yet.
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| The willow oak of today's discussion. As you can see the trunks are too thin and the side branches are not well developed. My fear is letting the top grow too much might kill the side branches. I put the rock there just now as a trial. It is too big, but that is what we were thinking about with root over rock. |
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| This is the only strangely shaped oak that I know in the woods behind our home. My wife calls it the howling dog tree. It is in one of the ephemeral ponds and I assume a regrowth from a stump that broke off. |
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| The twin-trunked red oak in the woods behind our home. This tree is at least 300 feet tall, and the trunk is huge; you would need at least four persons to span around one of the trunks. |
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