Will New Roots Grow Off This?

[brewmeister83]

Hi all,

So I made my first big bonsai purchase this year and got myself a decent Ulmus pre-bonsai:

This sucker is 20" tall with about a 3" trunk base and up to a 6" nebari depending on how high in the pot you plant it. It is definitely a mass produced tree from China and has a few ugly trunk cuts, and the pads are trained into an informal upright pompom style, but I'm planning on carving the cuts into uro and regrowing a lot of the neglected branch structure so it looks more naturalistic and like an elm.

The problem with this tree lies with it's roots (both above and below ground) You can see in the pic above that there's a couple wonky aerial roots that cris-cross and come straight towards you before going down, but I'm planning on cutting those back and planting the tree deeper to regrow them in a more "natural" way so they blend in and evntually fuse with the rest of the nebari. The big surprise came when I thought the tree was rootbound and decided to repot it.

It only has roots on one side! Somewhere in the past when this tree was potted up, it looks like all the roots grew down then spiraled over to the "right." Does anyone have experience dealing with this kind of root mess? Should I trim back the large roots one by one over successive seasons and regrow the structure, or can you induce new roots to grow on the blank side by using the drill and root hormone method some people use on maples?

 

[Poink88]

I would ground layer it if it is mine.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

It won't grow roots from the stump if it's dead. Can't tell where living tissue might begin from that photo, but you might be able to tell by looking at it. Sometimes on trees with thin bark, you can differentiate living (green) from dead (brown/orange) tissue through the bark when it's wet. Try to identify where the live tissue begins, then you'll know where roots are able to grow.

If it was mine, I'd let it be for a year and make a plan. It will not hurt the tree to have a dead portion of trunk/root under the soil level for a while.

 

[brewmeister83]

It won't grow roots from the stump if it's dead. Can't tell where living tissue might begin from that photo, but you might be able to tell by looking at it.

That's the thing - it's all alive, there's no dead anywhere on that stump. Just imagine if you took a vertical root system and "folded" it over to one side - that's what I'm dealing with here. I've thought about ground layering it, but (in a weird way) I love how the base is all twisted and layering it would remove that uniqueness from the tree. If I wanted a technically "perfect" nebari there were three other candidates next to it in the nursery, but this one spoke to me and I fell in love with the twists and gnarls - so I'm stuck with it now and have to make it work.

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

You can always dig into the soil a little, scuff up the stump to expose the cambium, apply some rooting hormone there, and pack the area with damp sphagnum moss...might get some roots to grow.

 

[october]

All future work aside, here is what I see. Seeing as how you just received this tree, you might be unaware of the work already done to it. To me, it looks like this tree might have been repotted and root pruned somewhat recently. By you digging it up again, it can cause a large amount of stress to this tree. You might want to contact the seller and find out when it was root pruned and repotted last. If it was within the last 6 months or so. The tree should not have been disturbed for about 2 years. Elms are tough though, so the tree should do ok.

As Brian said, scuffing up the cambium will probably get roots to grow. However his suggestion of leaving it alone for a year is good advice. Especially if you find out that this tree had work done recently.

Rob

 

[brewmeister83]

The repot was done recently by me about a month ago. Prior to that it looked like this:

I decided to repot it as soon as I got it b/c it was in a heavily organic and wet soil mix and was just starting to send out new leaf pips. I determined it was starting to get root bound - it was pure luck that the edge I lifted out of the pot to check was the side with all the roots. I'm happy to report that a month later the tree is drinking water like crazy and sending out new growth like crazy so the repot must not have been too traumatic.

I agree that since I repotted it I'm going to leave it for a season to grow and regain strength but I was wondering if it was a possibility with this species to induce new root growth off old wood - which it seems there is a good chance to.

Thanks for all who responded, if it works I'll post result pics in a season or two.

 

[lordy]

It's good that you seem to have potted it into something larger, but I like to put stuff that needs root regeneration into a grow bed. Hard to beat mother nature. Park it on top of a flat surface for 2 years and I'd bet the root system will fix itself.

 

[brewmeister83]

I was actually considering that, but the tree is in Florida right now and I'm in CT (bought it when I went to visit relatives and they're driving it up in April) But when it gets up here there is a spot in the garden I could plunk it for a couple seasons.