Literati Black Pine Repot

Club night Jan 15

Some nice trees/material being worked on by members  at the latest NIBS meeting on Friday night.

European Beech Forest

Elm (I think!)

Red leaved Japanese Maple

I practised a bit of wiring and styling of a young Japanese Black Pine that I’m training into a literati image.

Before

 

 

After

I pruned it in favour of the thinner trunk to get rid of the upper fork and promote better taper.  It’s hard to see the movement in the tree in the photo but it is there.  Over the next few years I’ll keep upper growth very short and build up two or three branch pads.  I’m going to allow the lower/bottom buds free growth and then prune or jin them eventually.

 

Young Japanese Black Pine tidy up

Another pine, this time JBP that I’ve had since bought as a seedling online four or five years ago. Again, I’d like this to be literati which is why it has been growing in the box and remains slender.  I’d like to beef up the bottom some more so I decided to pluck out extra buds from the top and remove a lot of needles from the upper trunk.  There is a decent sized bud at the bottom which I’d like to encourage next year.  Some slight inverse taper is beginning to appear at the point where you can see a set of ‘handlebar’ branches in the lower half.  I decided to remove one of them.  At some point over the winter I’ll wire the trunk to make it more interesting.  A long way to go with this one before the bark matures and fissures – I may try and speed things up next year by wrapping it moss.