5yr Native Tree Challenge - Dingus's ilex verticillata (Winter Berry)

[LittleDingus]

This thread will track my efforts at ilex verticillata over the next 5 years...or until I kill the trees...whichever comes first!

Ilex verticillata - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

At the time of joining this challenge, I lived in Missouri just outside of Kansas City. According to my best estimates, the nearest native range of winter berry is approximately 213 miles as the crow flies...so technically just outside of the contest rules by 13 miles. I'm gonna call it good...I'm not winning any prizes with my ameturish efforts

I don't care to dig up trees in the wild...so I got mine from a local nursery. Besides, I wanted to ensure I got a boy and a girl!

The boy is the 'Southern Gentleman' cultivar.



The girl is the 'Winter Red' cultivar.



They were purchased on 9/30/2020 from a local nursery. They were on sale, but not deeply discounted. Just enough I can claim I didn't pay full price...

My plan is to break them up and create a group planting. We'll see how that goes. Since we don't have to declare which of potentially multiple projects is our "entry" until the end, I'll keep this thread to track what I do with any of these ilex regardless of if I create one or more plantings out of them.

 

[penumbra]

I am anxious to try one of these as a bonsai but haven't yet found one that please me. You will also need a male for pollination. Most of what nurseries have are females but a good nursery should have the males as well.

 

[MrWunderful]

I always loved winterberry, but just cannot find them around here. I have a pic of a very impressive one I saw at a show somewhere...

Good luck!

 

[LittleDingus]

These guys came in 3 gallon nursery pots.

There wasn't a lot of options available with the girls. The nursery only had 2 pots available. The other one was a single plant multi trunk specimen that may have had some potential. The one I went with, however, looked to be 2 distinct plants in one pot...both of them bending over and running horizontal for a bit. That kinda gave me an idea. I'd like to try a group planting where the trees are coming out of a steep rocky shoreline...maybe even out of a short cliff face as is fairly common in the parts of Missouri where they are native.

There were more options with the boys. I went with what looked like possibly a number of trees fusing together in a line. There was one trunk in there I thought would fit in well with what I had in mind and the others I could set aside as backups for now.

Normally I would have set the pots aside and forgotten about them til spring, but given the 5 year time frame and that we've got a few more weeks before typical first frost, I decided to risk it and get the plants divided up and into some better soil.

I started with the ladies. Turns out I was right, the two trunks were individual trees!



They weren't fusing yet, but they were awfully entwined! The pot was filled with a dense mat of fibrous roots as well. There wasn't much hope of a gentle comb out and separation so I crossed my fingers and ripped into the root ball in an attempt to roughly cut it in half but still keep as many roots on each tree as I could. After about half an hour, this is what I ended up with.



What I'd really like to do is have the trees come out of something like a cliff face and bend sharply up to vertical. The trunks are actually pretty well shaped to allow that, but, now that they are cut apart, the roots are not well placed for planting that way Plus, since the trees wouldn't keep to their own sides nice and organized like, I've cut at least half the root mass off each trunk dividing them up

I didn't comb out any of the rest of the root ball. I planted each tree so that the trunk was vertical in roughly the position I hope it to be in the final composition and buried as much of the root ball as I could in a mixture of roughly 30% chunky coconut coif and 70% Napa 8822. Hopefully next season they'll start to balance some root structure again. Then I can start thinking how to unbalance it in the direction I want

For the boys, I was more brutal. I just took a saw and cut them down the middle!



I left the rest of the root ball for them alone for now too and planted them in the same coconut coif/8822 mix.

The family photo:



Closeups of the 3 I intend to use for a group planting:



Actually not sure on the male...but right now, I like options on this tree better.

For now, they'll sit over the winter. Given the hack job on the roots, I may bring them in the garage if we get ice or really bitter cold but otherwise, they'll site on a sheltered side of the house out of the wind. I _may_ do some light pruning of dead wood and branch tips once they drop all their leaves. Nothing major...just enough to open them up so more light can get to the interior.

And a final bonus picture of Josie Phibian!



Josie lives in my front yard trees. I see her from time to time on my cherry trees or on my rainbow eucs, or even on the side of the house. Apparently she was in the holly today when I dragged it out to work on it. I carefully mover her back to the cherry trees after taking her picture.

 

[LittleDingus]

I am anxious to try one of these as a bonsai but haven't yet found one that please me. You will also need a male for pollination. Most of what nurseries have are females but a good nursery should have the males as well.

I really wanted decidua but the nurseries around me don't carry it. I could only find females in the online nurseries. It's a closer to me native. I think I've seen them in the wild on nature walks but I've never gotten close enough to verify. I don't care to go the yamadori route...and I'd need a male anyway.

These were in the local nursery and I did buy a male as well. I intend to incorporate the male into the planting if my skill can match my ambition

I do have a bundle of decidua on order from the Missouri Department of Conservation. They sell natives to residents pretty cheap. They'll come bare root and from seed but I ordered a bundle of 25...law of averages suggest there should be both males and females in there! I might enter them into this challenge as well...but 1 year whips might not approach anything bonsai like in 5 years...

 

[LittleDingus]

I probably should have done this work last weekend...or maybe even 2 weekends ago. These guys are starting to leaf out now.



It should be ok. I just worry because they need a ton of root work! They are incredibly pot bound last fall when I cut them apart and I don't expect them to have loosened up much over the winter

I started with the male I'm hoping to use. If you in previous posts, you'll see that the male was originally a large clump that I split roughly in half to make 2 plants. The one I like better is still a pretty decent clump with 5 trunks.

These guys were terribly pot bound last fall and they still are now We've had a nice 2 days of soaking rain before today that I had hoped would loosen them up a bit, but this guy was such a thick mass of fibrous roots there was nothing to do but to hack and slash and try not to remove them all!



After some combing and sawing and doing what I could to open the root ball up more, this is what I ended up with:



The root mass is still pretty tight I didn't want to futz with it too much more though. I'm hoping to get some roots on the side that has none this year. Hopefully the cambium up at the top of that woody mass will decide to root out some...we'll see. If it doesn't, removing that huge woody mass might be tricky.

The female tree I had bought I was also able to break into two separate trees. Their roots masses were still equally tight



Because of how I'm hoping to plant them, I needed to be more aggressive with this one. Ultimately, I'm hoping for a group planting with the two female trees growing along the side of a rock face. I want this tree to grow roughly in this orientation:



For this tree, that places the bulk of the root ball on top of the intended soil line I did what I thought I could safely do to flatten the top of the root ball while keeping a lot of active root below the surface. I'll still need to plant this one a little deeper than I'd like in the hopes that some roots pop on the underside.

The second female was easier to deal with. More of the existing root ball was positioned to be under the soil line with the planting angle I want.



After combing it out and removing some of the dead roots from the other half of the tree, I was still left with a sizeable root ball.



I probably should have trimmed the roots back further but since they're leafing out already, I left them.

Here they all are after being potted back up:



Potting soil is almost 100% NAPA 8822 with a little coconut coir. I'm reasonably sure I'll be popping these guys to work roots again next season so I wanted something that would wash off easily when I do work on them again.

While I had them out to work on, I cleaned up a little dead wood...not enough to comment on, really. I don't plan on any major top work this year. I doubt I'll let them get much larger than they are right now though. I will almost certainly prune tips whenever I get the inkling to try and bush them out more. If they try to extend a lot, I'll likely cut them back to a rough outline but probably not much within the current outline, if at all. I'm a little limited in the space I have for these guys this year so I need to keep them under control some

My 5 year goal with these guys is a single planting with all 3 of these trees. I have a vision in my head for what I'd like in the end. I'll need to make my own planter to get there...something new to learn That's something I'm hoping to work on a bit this summer...learn what I need to get where I want to go

This project is a little ambitious!

 

[LittleDingus]

All leafed out and making flower buds

These are the 3 I'm aiming for a group planting. The left and right flanks are female, the center is male. Still working out how to make a pot. Since the females are so "one sided" I am still hoping for some kind of "growing out the base of a cliff" kind of look...still thinking that through though...I've got some other ideas that might be more practical to implement.



I'm continuing to let them grow wild to hopefully rebuild a more balanced root system. I'm thinking to chop them back to a more workable size next spring.

But, for this year, I'm hoping for some berries!



There won't be a high density of berries even if every flower forming makes a berry...mostly I'm just hoping to see them bloom at the same time and see some berries set

I have moved these 3 into a brighter part of the yard now to soak up some more rays.

The second male is still chillin' where they were. It's creating suckers like crazy!



The primary male is doing well enough that I may be looking to dump this one before too long, though I'm continuing to reduce duplicates as much as I can to regain some space and prepare for a possible move next year.

 

[LittleDingus]

Apologies for the poor pictures...I didn't feel like dragging them out into the open.

The boy:



The two girls:



I let the second boy I had die to recover some space. Both males were putting out a ton of suckers. I yanked about 3 batches of them from this male and it still has more! The females didn't sucker at all.

I' still thinking a group planting with all 3. I'll need to make a custom pot to plant them as I envision though. I'm not sure if I'll tackle that next year or not.

I may repot them in the spring to see if the female root systems have started to balance better yet...maybe root prune a bit to try and encourage them to. Most of the roots were on the wrong side for how I eventually want to plant them.

I might prune the male back hard and see if I can get some branching down lower. I like the clump of trunks...but the canopy needs to be pulled back for what I'm envisioning. Ultimately, I'd like each tree to be under 2'.

 

[LittleDingus]

Alive and well into another year!



I am getting some natural back budding on the ladies



I'll might rub those off at some point. My plan is to grow those trunks alongside a "cliff" or "bluff" so I don't really want branches on the "open" sides. I'm leaving them for now out of laziness. This was the year I was going to put some thought into how I want to plant these guys long term...possibly in a home made concrete pot.

The gent is producing more suckers than backbuds!



That's more than a half dozen suckers from underground. I did trim them off before they get too substantial.



It originally had 5 trunks that I was thinking to keep as a clump. One was faltering and being replaced by all those suckers. I pruned it off entirely now...you can see the wound at the base of the 3 trunks. Now I'm thinking to prune off that forth trunk on the left and go with the 3 trunks for the gent.

My plan, if I can pull it off, is a central bluff with the gent growing at the top and the two ladies crowding the bluff face on either side. It'll make sense if I ever make a sketch...or it won't and I'll have my fake internet points revoked

And they are building flower buds

The boy



and the girls



Long way to go yet, but maybe I'll get a decent crop of berries this year!