Large Liquidambar-1

[Hbhaska]

I’m starting a progression thread for this tree. It’s a large liquidambar that I collected from someone’s yard and air-layered the top; the bottom mother tree was trunk-chopped (sawed) in a slanting manner and let grow for a season. You can see the preliminary work here -

Air-layering a liquidambar after collection

This tree was collected last August. It’s been through one season of Fall, winter and spring. Now it’s flushing growth like crazy and generally in good shape. I would like to air-layer the top but should I wait until next year or can I do this in the summer of this year, a few months from now?

www.bonsainut.com

Now the tree is ready to be pruned back so I did just that. The tree is very vigorous, throwing root suckers and all. I tried to ground layer it last year, it completely healed up. This was surprising as the air-layering on the tree worked great; you can check that out in the original thread (the link above). In any case, I will attempt to ground layer again, this time a bit higher and also include rooting hormone (something I did include got the air-layer).

 

[Hbhaska]

Today the tree was ground layered. Tried to get as much bark as possible and put growth hormone dipped in toilet paper around the top cut site. Then filled it with substrate and gave it a light sprinkle. Will water the base heavily but only mist to keep the layer part slightly moist but not too damp. Hope to see some success this time.

 

[Darth Masiah]

what happened? it looked like a good start to a ground layer.

 

[BrightsideB]

I’ve read several times liquidamber not taking layers well. I hope it took for the OP though.