Strange bonsai material advice

[Matt B]

I am in the mood to do something weird, so I am starting a bonsai odf a type I haven't ever seen, or heard discussed: Thanksgiving Cactus. I have a few houseplants that I have been playing around with for several years, and I have discovered a few thinks. They grow thick, woody trunks and branches when they are grown as single specimens, and they are fairly easy to ramify. They do like to grow linearly, and when they ramify, the branches want to spread out like a fan on one plane, unless they are encouraged to do something different.

In normal bonsai, this is rectified by wiring. I have been thinking about how to wire flat leaves that will eventually thicken into woody branches. Short of simply painstakingly flat-and-crease wiring the branches, I can't come up with a more elegant solution. I suppose I could run a thick strand of wire from the base, bend it into the path that I want the branch to follow, then strap the branches closely to the wire with landscape tape, but that would not allow for any twisting to break up the tendency for the branch to grow in a flat plane. Anyone have any ideas?

This is one specimen that I could thin out and start working, but the challenge is readily apparent.

 

[RoadManDenDron]

How does it respond to clip and grow?

 

[penumbra]

Sometimes older houseplants and tropicals develop a lot of character as the become more tree like.

 

[Matt B]

How does it respond to clip and grow?

You don't clip mid leaf, you break it at the node between two leaves. It snaps off clean, and cuttings can just be stuck in the dirt and will grow. At the node end left on the plant, it will either begin replacing the broken leaf, or it will split and grow two or more leaves. Lately, I have been repeatedly pruning single leaves ultil the branch splits. More branching means more growing tips, which will produce more flowers every year around Thanksgiving.

 

[Empty Mountain]

Of course our guy Nigel would try one of these. This should be helpful.

 

[Matt B]

Examples

Of course our guy Nigel would try one of these. This should be helpful.

Oh Nigel, of course you did. Your hair is it's own type of bonsai...

On a serious note, I think I did run across this video a while back, but he is not doing any type of training, simply cutting back and waiting to see what it gives him.

This is what the growth does when it is clipoed:

 

[Matt B]

As you see, it's natural tendency is to ramify two-dimentianally. I have weighted branches or tied them to different orientations, and the shape will hold like any tree, but given that the trunk grows out of thickened leaves, and the shape of the leaves are flat, it is challenging to wire.

The other challenge is that in order to change the direction of the fan, and create leaves that fan in different directions, a leaf must be twisted and held to that shape until it sets.