Beautyberry Projects

[Tree Bender]

Been lurking long enough so I thought I'd start my own progression thread so future beginners can learn from my mistakes

Got this beautyberry about a month ago. I actually picked out another one, but the owner of the nursery wanted to keep it as an example because it had so many berries. This one is a little ugly by itself with a long knobby trunk with inverse taper, but I liked the movement up top so I think I'll separate this into two trees in the spring via air layer. At separation I'll chop back down and see what back buds on the original stump.

 

[Tree Bender]

Closer look at the top, with options for chopping back since I think the top branches have straight and boring sections compared to the bottom of the future air layer. From this angle, 2 and 3 have long straight sections, so I think 1 is speaking to me here with nice taper and movement. The air layer will probably be at a slight angle to maximize the flare of the knob.

Actually, there's a fourth branch in the back that wouldn't be bad either. At first glance it looked poor because of a couple scars and some inverse taper on the trunk from the angle. But then I turned it and now I see some potential for 4 and to make it a semi-cascade! Open to any opinions or advice

 

[Crawforde]

It’s hard to tell but some of the cuts you marked look small enough that I wouldn’t air layer them, I would just cut them and put in some soil.
American beauty berry roots easily, I don’t know about the Japanese variety.