What follows is a combination of many of the smaller articles I have written on collecting, compiled for convenience. Some material has been rewrote, most remains the same.
Collecting From The Wild
All who collect should observe the ethical considerations of collecting because the way in which we collect affects collectors worldwide. Unethical collecting can give a bad name to bonsaists everywhere and can make it very difficult for others to acquire permission to collect in the future. The following are some considerations that I personally abide by.
- Always obtain permission from the landowner before you collect. Every single piece of land belongs to someone, be it a roadside, construction lot, field, woods, abandoned house, or farm.
- Collecting anything that you do not own and/or do not have permission to is stealing.
- Never take the only tree of it’s kind in the area.
- Never collect a tree that you are not sure has a very good chance of survival. Experience can tell if a tree can be successfully collected or not.
- Only collect what you will use.
- Always fill in your holes and remove any and all signs that you were there.
- Do not leave your garbage behind and always pack out other garbage that you may find. The key here is to leave the site better than you found it.
Over the years I have refined the tools I take down to the base minimum and as I sometimes have to walk a ways to where I will be collecting, this helps lighten my load and save my back. The following is a list of tools and supplies I carry in my backpack when collecting.
- Short shovel, which I keep a good sharp edge on. Folding shovels break easy, I don’t use them.
- Long handled and short handled pruners.
- A good sharp knife.
- A GPS unit.
- A saw. I carry a handsaw for small jobs and for serious collecting I pack the battery powered recuperating saw
- A small hatchet.
- A pry bar.
- Burlap bags and twine.
- A few plastic bags for smaller trees.
- A mesh laundry bag for collecting sphagnum moss.
- A few nursery pots.
- Snacks, water, a lighter, and a good first aid kit.
- A small plastic child’s sled, nothing works better for dragging out a tree on flat terrain. (I use my external frame backpack for humping out trees on rougher terrain.)
- also have a lightweight come-a-long I pack for tougher jobs.
I do most of my collecting up north on a few acres that I own and on a few more acres that friends own. I also have obtained permission from a few local. I spend many hours walking these areas and I have examined many trees, marked a few in my GPS for future consideration, and collected a few. Depending on the species and age of the tree I use different methods for collecting with a high ratio of success.
The Three-Year Plan
Most of the bigger and older Jack Pines and other species that I have marked in my GPS are on what I call a three-year plan. The first spring after I find the tree I dig a two-foot trench just outside of the drip line, half way around the tree. I use my saw to severe any roots that I encounter and also to lightly prune the tree to remove any branches that will not be needed or to start to encourage back budding. I fill the hole in being sure to mix in some fertilizer and chopped sphagnum moss. I use the granular type fertilizer for this and find that the tree will not put roots out pass this enhanced feed area. The sphagnum moss greatly helps with new root development where I cut the roots.
The second spring I repeat the process except I dig my trench on the other half of the circle. By now the roots have recovered on the other side and are now closer to the trunk. I once again mix fertilizer and chopped sphagnum moss in when I fill the hole.
The third spring I trench all the way round the tree and reach under to severe the taproot. I then tilt the tree one-way and slide burlap under one side. I tilt the tree the other way and pull the burlap through, completely wrapping the root ball. I tie it off with twine being sure to wrap the twine around the root ball also and then lift the whole root ball out of the hole. A word of caution here; do not lift the tree by the trunk. Doing so will damage the bark and loosen or tear the roots.
Collecting On The Spot
For trees that are not as old or for trips where for reasons the tree must be collected when variations of the above three-year plan can be used. I have collected older trees in two years or less by making one trench in spring and the other in the fall of the same year and collecting the following spring.
Collecting on the spot requires that you get as much as the root ball as possible to assure survival. The soil conditions in the spot you collect will dictate if spot collecting can be done. Some places you will find create naturally tight root balls close to the trunk, others the roots may go on for yards with no feeder roots close to the trunk. The latter trees should be left alone; they are not collectable on the spot and would require a longer plan such as the three-year plan outlined above.
Photo #28803
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When you must collect a tree on the spot great care must be taken to retain as much of the root ball as possible. In the attached diagram I show the best way to dig a tree out in this situation. Trenching completely around the tree and then undercutting the root ball is a far better way than to angle the shovel in and pry. In this way the root ball is less disturbed and the trees chances of survival is much greater. Wetting the root ball prior to digging will help the soil to remain in place. See the diagram on the left to better understand this digging method.
It is always a good idea to be prepared to collect other items while you are out. I have found some nice stones and driftwood while out, save room for these in your pack. One item I always collect whenever I am out is Sphagnum Moss. I not only use this for air layering but I also use it in my soil mix for freshly collected trees and as I have mentioned, I use it to back-fill my trenches when I am spading a tree for future collection. The pictures below are of Sphagnum Moss growing in the wild and a mesh laundry bag which I find is perfect for collecting it.
Photo #20768
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Photo #20769
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After Care
Once you have collected the trees you wanted be sure to keep the root ball damp, never allow it to dry out. Since I make it a habit to collect sphagnum moss while I am collecting trees, I usually pack the root ball with moss first and then wrap with plastic or burlap. I use my judgment, depending on the overall health of the tree and the root mass to determine if it will go into a training pot, growing box, or straight into the growing bed. I never style a collected tree until one or two full seasons has passed and the tree shows significant signs of healthy growth. I will however prune back to encourage back budding if the health of the tree will allow it.
OOPS
So you collected that tree you found and to your great dismay, the roots are not quite what you expected. For trees where the root mass is small and there are few feeder roots I treat them almost like an air-layer. I securely tied the tree into a growing box with a soil mixture of 75% sphagnum moss and 25% of free draining soil mix. I have had great success with this method once I realized that I do the same thing to “create” roots from nothing on air-layers. I use this technique only in early spring as it seems to work best then and it allows enough roots to form to allow me to transplant before the seasons end. This technique has also served me well in the past with trees that suffered from rot.
Micro Environments
Before you collected that tree it was living in a relationship with other plants and fungus. These relationships can be major like the Mycorrhizae in the roots system or minor like living in the shade cast by a larger nearby tree or playing host to the moss and lichen growing on its trunk.
There are also Micro Enviroments created by the plants that are growing around the trunk and on top of the root ball. These plants have shaded the root ball, collected dew, held in moisture, supplied nutrients, and hosted a vast collection of micro organisms since the tree was a seedling. The plants roots are intermingled with the roots of the tree, at times sharing the same water, nutrients and beneficial Mycorrhizae with the very tree you are collecting.
Removing the tree from its environment is stressful enough without also ripping out these plants that form a Micro Environment that the tree is used to. Removing the plants that make up this Micro Environment will also unnecessarily disturb the fine upper most roots of the tree. When I collect I take great care to collect the whole root ball including all the plants that are growing on it. I am very careful to leave all the plants except obvious weeds untouched as they can removed gradually as the tree strengthens and totally removed at the next repotting once the tree has become accustomed to it’s new environment.
In Colin Lewis's book "The Art Of Bonsai Design" on page 115 in a side article about collecting wild pines he states, "Take as substantial a root ball as possible and wrap it very tightly in plastic sheeting and packing tape. Retain the flora growing in the root ball (apart from dandelions and other obvious weeds). This flora forms part of a ecosystem that the pine also plays a role in. They may share mycorrhiza, or some may influence the nature of the nutrient or trace element content of the local soil."
He then goes on to say, "Subterranean organisms certainly do have a significant effect on the ability of plants to survive stress such as transplanting. These organisms, in turn, can depend on the local plants for their success. In simple terms, don't break the cycle until the pine is accustomed to living on it's own new root system."
The pictures below are of a Jack Pine I collected recently. The first two pictures are of the intact root ball as collected; the third picture is of the root ball after I have taken a chopstick to the edges and underside. I use a wooden chopstick to loosen the soil around the edges and bottom, exposing only the slightest amount of roots. The top is left completely untouched. The only roots I remove are thick ones that protrude beyond the confines of the box it will be planted in and these only if I cannot bend them to fit. Sometimes it is feasible to wire a big root to another, bending it inwards so it fits. Cutting off a root on a freshly collected tree should only be done as a last resort.
Photo #22847
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Photo #22848
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Photo #22849
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Upon potting the collected tree into a training box I set the intact root ball onto a shallow layer of soil and then work a mix of soil and sphagnum moss around all sides, then I slightly cover all the surface plants with a thin layer of soil as I have found that they respond much better this way and will grow up through the soil in a couple of weeks. The pictures below are of the completed potted tree in a training box with the surface plants covered mostly with a soil mix consisting of 70% lava rock, 10% turface, and 20% fir bark.
Photo #22854
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Photo #22857
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Let A Tree Be A Tree
It has been mentioned in many articles that one should cut back foliage after collecting in order to “balance” the foliage to the recently cut root mass. I believe that there is absolutely no way that we can guess the amount, if any, to cut back to achieve this balance.
While it is true that trees have an inbuilt need for balance and that they will go to great lengths to achieve it, I have found that some of the current practices are detrimental to the survival and development of the tree.
You see when we slightly cut back the roots on a collected tree we create an unbalance in the tree that the tree is genetically programmed to over come. The excess foliage (in comparison to the freshly trimmed root mass) causes a water loss in the tree by the water diffusing out of the stomata as carbon dioxide diffuses in for photosynthesis and that the smaller root mass can not supply.
The solution to this problem is not cutting back the foliage because we can never know how much. Too little and you still have an unbalanced system, too much and you now have another completely different unbalance in the tree.
Instead the solution is to let the tree be a tree. The tree will respond to a light trimming of the roots and the resulting unbalance by creating more roots! Yes, exactly what we want and all we have to do is leave it alone. When there are too many leaves on a tree and not enough roots, water stress will increase, leaf growth will stop and root growth will continue until balance is once again achieved.
A tree has built in feedback controls hardwired between the foliage and the roots designed so that the tree stays in balance. We see examples of this all the time; in fact often we use it to our advantage, I wonder why we so often go against what we see with our own eyes?
In Bonsai Today issue 75 on page 48 Walter Pall states in part two of his "Collecting Trees From The Wild" article, "Trying to balance the crown and the roots of a tree, as is often recommended, makes no sense. The tree itself knows much better what to do. Even Japanese collectors have had the same experience. After digging up a juniper, they leave the branches and needles intact. A year later, they can prune away long branches."
Below are some pictures of a Jack Pine that I discovered and collected. You can see from the pictures that none of the foliage has been cut back at all. I will not cut any back until very early spring. At this point I will be using the trees natural balance again but in reverse for another reason. Once the roots have balanced themselves with the foliage, I will then cut back the foliage. The tree will once again respond to keep balance but this time it will be trying to balance the pruned foliage with the roots, forcing out new growth on branches and also new buds on old wood. This technique has allowed me to successfully obtain back budding on older pines.
Photo #20758
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Photo #20759
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Photo #20760
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Against Doctors Orders
Imagine going to the doctor for a illness and learning that he recommends no medicine, no food, no vitamins, and warns against anything life giving at all. You and I would automatically label this doctor a quack and seek a second opinion, yet we take the same advice regarding our freshly collected bonsai to heart.
It has often been said that you should place a freshly collected tree in the shade and withhold fertilizer for some time. I personally do not subscribe to this school of thought. I cannot see withholding life giving sun or nutrients from a tree that is in great need of repair.
A tree is a very complex organism with many built in controls as I have mentioned above. Trees have evolved to deal with injuries in many ways, none of which includes changing location to a shady, sterile spot until it heals.
When a tree is injured it goes into a repair mode where cells are produced to start healing wounds and to increase growth in order to replace the missing foliage and/or roots. The tree will once again seek to balance itself and by doing so will require energy in the form of sunlight and nutrients. By withholding either, we force the tree to tap reserves that are best left for uncontrollable events.
I have placed freshly collected pines in direct sunlight and started feeding from the minute they are potted. In fact if you count the weakened fish emulsion solution that I often spray on the roots to prevent drying out, I actually start feeding before the tree is actually potted. To date I have had no ill effects and the trees seem to respond better than the others I tried using the "starve in darkness" method.