Pinus Nigra Log-In-A-Pot Project

sorce

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It has been 2 years.
And this is an awesome tree........

Sorce
 

grouper52

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Many people seem interested in an update with this guy: I haven't done much, except to clean it up a bit today. The needles are starting to shorten some, which is most welcome, but a long, long way to go. Soil around the roots has also washed away a bit, giving it a bit of a castle on a cliff look (not altogether out of place, though, given its "Austrian roots," so to speak).

Anyway, it still has promise as a project, so here it is.
 

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grouper52

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Well, then, with a little help from my friend Photoshop, I got it off that cliff with a repot . . ..
 

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my nellie

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Thank you very much for responding!
Have a nice trip along the way with this beautiful tree.
 

grouper52

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Thank you very much for responding!
Have a nice trip along the way with this beautiful tree.

Athens?! You're from Athens??! My wife and I were just there last spring!

My, how Athens had changed from the quaint, sleepy little city I visited as a backpack-toting vagabond in the spring of 1970 on my way to Trikala, where I was to spend a summer or more teaching English in an arrangement set up by my father through a friend: the only trouble was that the contact info I had was bogus, and, after a week trying to locate the nonexistent contact person in Trikala, my meager life savings ran out and I had to head home, traveling somehow almost totally without money (many adventures, and no guarantees that I would to live to tell about them) until I got to Luxembourg, from which I had a ticket home.

Anyway, thanks for your kind words about this tree. It is not difficult material, it seems, but it is material that is difficult to make look good, at least in the style I like. Topiary pads, which I hate, seem to be the best results I can get with this thing, although I have a sense that someone with a whole lot more patience and love of this tree's potential than I have could do something at least a bit more pleasing with it. Had this been a JBP, this could have been a contender: as it is, I'll likely donate it to the local club. The long, thin, dense and delicate needles are simply not conducive to a convincing display.
 

my nellie

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From 1970 to 2014 is a looong time!
And yes Athens has changed a lot. And the change has made the city to loose something about its original character...
Non-existing person in Trikala ehh? :D Adventures in Greece :D

On the tree now. You have made a lot of good work and even though the result is not quite your taste, however, this is a beautiful image of a tree in my opinion.
I have bought one P. nigra (nothing special about it, just an ordinary nursery tree) and I will select branches and prune next month.
 

grouper52

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Haven you considered grafting JBP scions onto the branches?

That might be worth a try, but it would be across species, and grafting is difficult enough here where the growing season is so short. We mostly send junipers down to California for grafting, for instance, because it simply won't work most of the time here. But having said that, I think a try is worthwhile, and if it succeeds it may make quite a tree. :) Thanks.

G52
 
D

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Wow! just browsing along and i think ive just found inspiration for the stump of a tree i found in the woods behind my house. Will take some staring at for a while, but this is really great
 

Vance Wood

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Wow! just browsing along and i think ive just found inspiration for the stump of a tree i found in the woods behind my house. Will take some staring at for a while, but this is really great

Inspiration is a great reward in itself. You cannot buy inspiration you can go looking for it you cannot buy it at a bonsai store or find it on a mountain side, but when it comes you will know it and often from sources you did not expect. I'm glad for you.
 

Potawatomi13

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I got this Austrian Black pine in the spring of 2008 at a nearby nursery where the owner grows all her own stuff off site from seeds and cuttings - no grafts, and no brushing or trimming of back buds off the lower trunk! The first photo shows it in the black plastic grow bag it came in, about 12 feet tall.
WOW! That last picture with the 2 kids was beyond impressive! How are you ever going to get THAT monster in a pot?:eek:
 

grouper52

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Someone was asking for an update on this tree. Here it is, for better or worse.

[OPTIONAL RANT: In loving memory of Klytus.

Some semi-radical pruning and reconfiguration of the deadwood and branches has produced an altogether different tree, and one that I'm not sure will be attractive over time, either to you or me. Some absinthe, rather than a recent penchant for highly aromatic, small batch Washington State gin martinis (a little dirty) would have probably been the road more traveled, but here we are on this road - or here I am anyway - with a 12' tree turned quasi-sumo, intruding endlessly on my awareness, like elevator-music Pachelbel's Canon.

Yet I like what I see in my juniper & aromatic botanical haze (entirely dry, of course, and shaken, not stirred, you fool). The pads are now forced to become more multi-leveled, more convincing, more promising perhaps, and they seem more-than-ready to follow the inclinations of this incarnation of the Khan, to endure whatever abuse I may visit upon them to fulfill my vision of the Western sea.

The needles reduce (though they still need trimming). There's back-budded progeny, promising eternal renewal. There's the stubborn, immovable, planted quality of the sumo, mete example - not of Tennyson's Ulysses - but of Wallace Stephen's Penelope. It will do. It will do. We will do together, tree and I, resolute. [And you thought I was drunk, mixing datura with my ayhuasca or something, needing Nicotiana rustica to modulate a rant like this - Ha! Oh ye of little faith! - Merely high on the precious time spent, likely wasted, on this hobby, like a boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting myself now and then with finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Ah, Carl - while you are not safe, I am not safe . . . .

Oh yeah, the tree. See, not really drunk at all.

Rant off]

Auastrian Black Pine-15.jpg
 

sdavis

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I really like what you have done. Opening up the trunk gives a great view of the magnificent taper. Well done!
Someone was asking for an update on this tree. Here it is, for better or worse.

[OPTIONAL RANT: In loving memory of Klytus.

Some semi-radical pruning and reconfiguration of the deadwood and branches has produced an altogether different tree, and one that I'm not sure will be attractive over time, either to you or me. Some absinthe, rather than a recent penchant for highly aromatic, small batch Washington State gin martinis (a little dirty) would have probably been the road more traveled, but here we are on this road - or here I am anyway - with a 12' tree turned quasi-sumo, intruding endlessly on my awareness, like elevator-music Pachelbel's Canon.

Yet I like what I see in my juniper & aromatic botanical haze (entirely dry, of course, and shaken, not stirred, you fool). The pads are now forced to become more multi-leveled, more convincing, more promising perhaps, and they seem more-than-ready to follow the inclinations of this incarnation of the Khan, to endure whatever abuse I may visit upon them to fulfill my vision of the Western sea.

The needles reduce (though they still need trimming). There's back-budded progeny, promising eternal renewal. There's the stubborn, immovable, planted quality of the sumo, mete example - not of Tennyson's Ulysses - but of Wallace Stephen's Penelope. It will do. It will do. We will do together, tree and I, resolute. [And you thought I was drunk, mixing datura with my ayhuasca or something, needing Nicotiana rustica to modulate a rant like this - Ha! Oh ye of little faith! - Merely high on the precious time spent, likely wasted, on this hobby, like a boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting myself now and then with finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Ah, Carl - while you are not safe, I am not safe . . . .

Oh yeah, the tree. See, not really drunk at all.

Rant off]

View attachment 77713
Any update this tree?
 
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