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Join Date: Aug-2001
Location: Silicon Valley
Country: USA
Posts: 9,743
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Repotting Cork Bark Pine
Cork Bark Pine, also called "Japanese Cork Bark (Black) Pine" or "Brocade Pine" or "Nishiki Matsu" occupies a very unique place in bonsai.
The plant is prized for the wings of bark that form around its branches. The effect varies from strain to strain, but the pronounced corking bark is the main characteristic.
This corking develops at an early age, making specimens no more than five years old have the appearance of great age. Unfortunately, as rugged as these plants appear, they are notoriously fragile. Despite the thickness of the branches, the active portion of the plant is no bigger than a Japanese Pine of the same age. Consequently, you have a delicate pine structure beneath an armoring of corked plates. This puts a lot of weight on the branches, especially where they join the trunk and at those points between the corking flutes, as this is the only position at which teh branch or trunk can readily bend.
As a result, it's not uncommon to lose entire branches of of the tree as a result of trauma. So we need to treat them with extreme care. During cultivation, the branches are not allowed to grow very long without support. Sometimes a bamboo staked "Teepee" structure can be used to tie longer branches in place against movement in wind. Transporting these babies can be very difficult. As a result they are hardly ever imported and specimens of good size and quality are not often shown.
As if the problems with cultivation were not difficult enough, repotting can be a chore. Today we repotted five specimens ranging in size from just under a foot and 20 years age to nearly three feet (1m) in height and approximately 60 years old. The focus of this article is on the repotting operations and how it's possible to repot a tree of this size and delicate nature without breaking anything.
Photos will follow at a later date. For now we have just trade-out pictures.
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