grouper52
Masterpiece
This may be, perhaps, my last post before I'm banned for un-PC behavior by the PTB ... Enjoy! BTW, first-printing copies of Gnarly Branches have been selling on Amazon lately for $100-500+ ...
So here's another local tree with a name: Mulawin surat, which the woman who sold it to me assured me meant, "Bedbug Tree," but couldn't explain why ... a search turned up that other "mulawin" species in this part of the world had medicinal properties, and although I couldn't verify it for this specific tree, nor other "mulawins", the idea kept coming up cryptically - in searches that yielded the idea that other trees around the world were used to keep bedbugs away, or to treat their bites ... but the articles themselves never actually mentioned that "mulawins" were actually included in that group. These trees in general - although not the "surat" one as far as I could tell, are also known as "Vitex sp." but everybody in my research results threw up their hands as to what the "sp" meant, and what significance it had except perhaps to specify "species" which seemed to offer no one that wrote about it any solace as to what improvement this added to sorting out questions of taxonomy for either this or other members of whatever genus or whatever any given tree might occupy. Waste of time, the searches, but others might have better milage. The only pertinent info I found was a general statement made in several dead-end searches that either this tree or the genus, or whatever, were "highly prized" as bonsai - though none of those leads actually had a photo of any such bonsai to verify that it was the same as or similar to this tree.
Hopefully your eyes quickly glazed over as you tried to read that first paragraph, and you moved on to this paragraph: equally useless, perhaps, but adding, perhaps, a bit of local flavor and story-telling to enliven the post. My wife's brother-in-law, or one of many brothers-in-law I should say, is currently acting as our driver, and as my bodyguard, for our first few months of acclimation to the scene here. He likes to take an early morning walk each day, and discovered in the park across from our temporary apartment contained a little cluster of plant stalls, and he thought he saw one or two that had bonsai in them. When he came back and told me about it, I went over with him the next morning before they opened up, and looked around, and sure enough, there were bonsai, although mostly very small and unattractive ones. But we then went back the next day when the stalls were open, and found this little gem. It was in, however, a far-too-large pot in order to support a monstrous rock monstrosity composed of a needless number of medium to large rocks of disparate colors and sizes, pasted together with crudely applied cement ... we haggled the price for a while, then settled on a doable price if her husband could repot into a smaller pot with a smaller and more attractive rock, and we came back to get it today in its pleasing current configuration. Upon close final inspection, it was, indeed, free of bed bugs ....
I am posting the photos you see here, to follow up later with some progressions as I "work on it," (If the PTB don't can me with a site-wide "ignore" feature or somesuch) The foliage is a bit too predictable and tame for my tastes, and I've never actually seen a tree in nature displaying the overly-stylized "windswept" style that is a standard fixture here ... and besides - I'm simply incapable of getting a new tree without satisfying some unexplainable, compulsive itch to "work on it," whether it needs it or not. Someday, a really nice pot, and perhaps an even better rock may follow. But first, I want to free it of its local white wire, and until my brown US bonsai wire gets here, apply some bonsai wire the woman in the stall was also selling in little coils in only one size . and such ...
So here's another local tree with a name: Mulawin surat, which the woman who sold it to me assured me meant, "Bedbug Tree," but couldn't explain why ... a search turned up that other "mulawin" species in this part of the world had medicinal properties, and although I couldn't verify it for this specific tree, nor other "mulawins", the idea kept coming up cryptically - in searches that yielded the idea that other trees around the world were used to keep bedbugs away, or to treat their bites ... but the articles themselves never actually mentioned that "mulawins" were actually included in that group. These trees in general - although not the "surat" one as far as I could tell, are also known as "Vitex sp." but everybody in my research results threw up their hands as to what the "sp" meant, and what significance it had except perhaps to specify "species" which seemed to offer no one that wrote about it any solace as to what improvement this added to sorting out questions of taxonomy for either this or other members of whatever genus or whatever any given tree might occupy. Waste of time, the searches, but others might have better milage. The only pertinent info I found was a general statement made in several dead-end searches that either this tree or the genus, or whatever, were "highly prized" as bonsai - though none of those leads actually had a photo of any such bonsai to verify that it was the same as or similar to this tree.
Hopefully your eyes quickly glazed over as you tried to read that first paragraph, and you moved on to this paragraph: equally useless, perhaps, but adding, perhaps, a bit of local flavor and story-telling to enliven the post. My wife's brother-in-law, or one of many brothers-in-law I should say, is currently acting as our driver, and as my bodyguard, for our first few months of acclimation to the scene here. He likes to take an early morning walk each day, and discovered in the park across from our temporary apartment contained a little cluster of plant stalls, and he thought he saw one or two that had bonsai in them. When he came back and told me about it, I went over with him the next morning before they opened up, and looked around, and sure enough, there were bonsai, although mostly very small and unattractive ones. But we then went back the next day when the stalls were open, and found this little gem. It was in, however, a far-too-large pot in order to support a monstrous rock monstrosity composed of a needless number of medium to large rocks of disparate colors and sizes, pasted together with crudely applied cement ... we haggled the price for a while, then settled on a doable price if her husband could repot into a smaller pot with a smaller and more attractive rock, and we came back to get it today in its pleasing current configuration. Upon close final inspection, it was, indeed, free of bed bugs ....
I am posting the photos you see here, to follow up later with some progressions as I "work on it," (If the PTB don't can me with a site-wide "ignore" feature or somesuch) The foliage is a bit too predictable and tame for my tastes, and I've never actually seen a tree in nature displaying the overly-stylized "windswept" style that is a standard fixture here ... and besides - I'm simply incapable of getting a new tree without satisfying some unexplainable, compulsive itch to "work on it," whether it needs it or not. Someday, a really nice pot, and perhaps an even better rock may follow. But first, I want to free it of its local white wire, and until my brown US bonsai wire gets here, apply some bonsai wire the woman in the stall was also selling in little coils in only one size . and such ...
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If you were in danger of being banned I would send you notes in private, and not respond publicly. If I respond publicly to something being posted, it means I disagree with it - not that it is a bannable offense 
