How to wire pines grown from seed

[Marc Wiehn]

I have been reading the various threads on here about growing pines from seeds, the pros and cons of the various techniques and it's all great stuff. I have a pretty green thumb when it comes to growing things, raised my share of various seedlings, so that's not the issue. I have trees that are mostly from nursery material and one or two yamadori's so the styling was to a great extend already there.

My biggest challenge comes when it's time to wire the seedlings of pines or maples for the first time. So at two or three years, depending, to give them an interesting shape. I would be curious to learn how you guys do that. Do you have an image in mind for that tree in the future? Do you just randomly give it curves and motion? Do you plan for this one to become a cascade, that one a formal upright and that one a literati? Can you guys explain how you do it? What you do and why? Thanks a bunch!

 

[Adair M]

Find Eric's thread: "A few pine seeds six years later".

Also look at Jonas's blog: www. Bonsaitonight".com.

 

[Marc Wiehn]

I started following Jonas' blog a few weeks ago and I have been studying the thread by Eric in great detail. That was the reason for my question. I admire especially Eric's work and documentation of the process, but I am not sure how he decided to give shape to those seedlings for the first time. For example, did he decide he wanted a cascade and wired a seedling accordingly before starting it on it's long road of building girth by sacrifice branches etc? Or his exposed root pines, did he want several in that style and selected a few seedlings for it.And if so, how did he decide to bend the seedling just right to give it the shape it is in? Does this make sense? I mean, I can wire a seedling and give it bends and curve it around and even give it a cascade shape. The question I have do you envision the final shape when you do that or do you give each seedling random pleasingly looking bends and curves and then decide a few years later what the final shape will be? There is one pine he decided to style a s a formal upright. From the text it sounds like he didn't plan this from the beginning, but that along the way that particular tree developed a bud at the right spot so he could train that as the straight trunk extension while bending the sacrifice branch to the side. That lead me to question whether you should have an idea, even a rough one at that stage, what your seedling should eventually grow up to become, or if you give each seedling a random shape and decide later on whether it will be a literati, informal upright, slant style or something else altogether. I am not sure I explain this adequately...

 

[Adair M]

I know Jonas starts dozens every year. I think he just bends them randomly, and let's them grow. After a few years, he culls out the ones that don't do as well as the others. I don't think he tries to decide if a one year old seedling is going to be a cascade, informal upright, etc until later. He does too many to make that judgement really early on.

I think the trick is to not only try one or two. Start 100. Maybe 4 years later, select 10 to keep.

 

[garywood]

Marc, about the only thing that's critical is the tightness of the curves. Trees with tight curves are almost destined to be small trees. Tight curves grow together and fuse forming knots when grown too long. That's not always bad but usually it is. Bend some have fun and imagine what you can do the next year. It soon becomes a game ;-)

 

[Marc Wiehn]

Makes sense, about the tightness of the curves. I collected some sylvestris seed this fall and will raise seedlings next spring and just jump. Let's see how they turn out. Thanks for your answers and suggestions.

 

[Eric Schrader]

Marc,

That's a insightful question, one that I've actually been working on writing about recently. However, i'm not ready to share the full text that I'm writing so I'll try to simply answer your question. As an aside, Gary is right, and Adair is right about Jonas. However, there are as many ways to make a pine tree as there are people to do it.

Regarding the formal upright - It was intended to be a formal upright from the time that it exhibited superior root structure, when it was only an unwired 2-year-old. The root spread on a formal upright has to be nearly perfect and this is my one and only attempt so I wanted to get it right. I'm not a huge fan of the style so I don't intend to make a lot of them. The bud that has become the second trunk section was placed intentionally by wiring it into position with the sacrifice to the back and the small bud facing upward. The same thing is true for the third and fourth trunk sections above it now with all sacrifice branches exiting in the same direction. This technique was one that I found in an old Japanese magazine, and it is intended to keep the center of the tree vertical when growing black pines for formal upright. If you simply cut off and start a new leader without having planned the cut point then the new bud will be on the front or side, rather than centered over the existing lower trunk section.

Regarding wiring - with the first batch there was a mix of intentional style creation and simply adding random movement. On the whole, I believe that if you have the ability to create a style intentionally from scratch that you will get faster and better results by planning the entire process first and executing it to plan. Obviously you may need to modify the plan along the way, but make a plan and stick to it for more consistent results. The random movement ends up creating a lot of inferior trees. The trees that were created with an intentional style and plan were the exposed root cascades, root-over-rock, formal upright, and a couple of the informal uprights. Others that did not have as clear a plan in place have already been culled from the batch because they are not nearly as good now 10 years later.

If you have not already seen them, I'd refer you to the following entries on my blog:

http://www.phutu.com/black-pine-creation/
http://www.phutu.com/bernards-forest/

This one discusses creating the cascading exposed root tree:
http://www.phutu.com/exposed-root-pine-2/

The creation of the exposed roots, the wiring of the trunk to cascade and then pushing them over to the side was all planned...but at the stage you're at right now you would just wire up the trunk and put it on top of a tube of soil to duplicate this.

 

[Marc Wiehn]

Thanks a ton, Eric. You confirmed what I speculated on. I am looking forward to that write-up about the early styling and wiring decisions. Very much appreciated!