Hello all
Here is my Picea abies sp. Nidiformis (so called “nest spruce”), which I bought recently in a nursery. The trunk is about 2" at the base.
It is quite a new experience for me since so far I hadn’t styled a spruce and this is the most expensive and complex material, which I will style by myself so far.
Needless to say I would like to avoid making some wrong decisions, which would result in the tree being a lesser bonsai than it could have. Given my limited experience, this seems like quite a good tree to me, but then again I may be wrong :-)
So I gave the tree an initial clean up and came up with 6 trunk options, with which I could possibly proceed.
As you can see from the jins in the first picture I got rid of 4 of the candidates (the major reasons were that they were too thin, lacked taper and suitable branches or the foliage was way far from the trunk line).
However this still leaves me with 2 trunks.
- Trunk option 1 – the branch with smaller caliper (left)
- Trunk option 2 – the one with the larger caliper (right)
Since I’m on a holiday it’s been some 3 days that I’m thinking about this spruce and I’m starting to feel I need some advice from more experienced people since my holiday will also have an end to it :-)
Below are some of my own thoughts regarding pros and cons of each trunk and also some very rough virtual layouts (made with MS Paint, sorry for the poor quality).
The problem seems that both trunk options look doable and good (to me), so I would appreciate your thoughts and advice very much so I pick the better of them both.
Also a technical question – do you wire and shape the spruce just as a pine, i.e. with little bunches of needles at ends of branches, which are arranged into pads? I read that the only chance to force a spruce to back bud is to leave the needles on the whole length of the branches, but that make wiring a pain, doesn’t it? Any tips would be much appreciated.
Trunk 1
▪ Pros
o Looks more bushy with more branches (provides more options for branch placement, perhaps will look like a finished tree sooner)
o Is thinner than option 2 (can be bent more easily)
o Don’t know if it is a plus or minus, but this trunk has quite a thick branch, almost as thick as the trunk about an 1.5 inch higher than the jin (this branch is not seen in the photo); this branch could be used as the main branch for the shakkan/slanting style (provided I can bend it ~150 degrees w/out breaking :-) )
▪ Cons
o The trunk line is rather boring and a bend could possibly be introduced only at some 1.5-2 inches after the jin
o The branch lacks dramatic taper after the split of the 2 trunks
Trunk 2
▪ Pros
o Has some thicker branches (enough for the main branches) and enough young branches that could develop with more time
o Trunk line has a gentle bend at the split of the 2 trunks
▪ Cons
o The middle section is somewhat straight and would be difficult to bend in case more dramatic movement would be desired
Some designs hat I could think of (see attachments)
w/ trunk 1
1. Shakkan. Looks nice (to me)
2. Shakkan w/ jinned top. Looks even nicer
w/ trunk 2
1. Moyogi w/ top slightly to the left. Looks nice, a bit longish
2. Moyogi w/ jinned top (lightning struck), which later could be run down the trunk as a shari. New apex in this case is made of the small branch which is pointing upward in the original photo. A risk in this case probably would be that there would be too few branches to make the design. However, the tree is lower and looks older (to me)
Aaaarghh… now I want to do both – the shakkan w/ jinned apex and the moyogi w/ jinned apex. Anyone heard of any method to clone trees? :-D
Thanks for your help in advance