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bonsaiTALK Craftsman
Join Date: Nov-2001
Posts: 86
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Pink Lady Flowering Quince
This is my Chaenomeles x Superba ‘Pink Lady’. I’ve had this tree since 2002. Its development has been long and slow and it is just now getting to a place I feel comfortable with getting comments from others. The result I desired has remained consistent: I wanted to make a very rugged framework to contrast with the profuse flowers.
One of the first decisions I made along these lines happened when I decided to leave the horizontal root projection, rather than remove it. I hope its ungainly qualities serve to accent the beauty of the flowers.
The first picture shows the tree in 2005, after three years of work. Quince have weak root systems, according to Peter Adams in his book on flowering bonsai, and this tree’s roots were weaker than most, in spite of my attempts to bolster them. Shortly after this picture was taken, I glued it to a flat rock for stability. I also began to visualize the tree differently than I had before. I lopped off the long “coat hanger” branch, and opted to style the tree as a windswept.
The second picture shows the tree as of today. Between the first picture and the second, I wired the major branches into a windswept position. When I removed the wire, the branches failed repeatedly to hold their position, so I used branch splitters to make cuts, and raffia and wire to form the branches as seen here.
The Pink Lady is one of the most prolific bloomers I have. It began blossoming in February, and will continue to do so through June.
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