cedrus deodora prostrate beauty

dtree

Any suggestions for care of this tree ? I have read everything I could, just wondering if anyone has some hands-on experience with deodora. I got a great deal on a 5 foot tall, 3-4 inch trunk tree in a 10 gallon pot. It is a dwarf form with blue 1/2 inch needles. It is 'prostrate beauty', not 'prostate beauty' as the nursery man stated !!! Thanks for your kind help.
-dtree

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dtree

here are two pics of the tree, one showing the foliage, the other the nice taper in the trunk. Sorry for the poor photos but the tree is too heavy to move around to where I can get a better shot.

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Dav4

Never grew one as a bonsai. I do know that they are borderline hardy as landscape trees in my zone 6, so they will need significant winter protection in your zone 4. Good luck,


Dave

rockm

Nice trees to work with. They hate soggy soil. It will kill them--I killed mine by watering too much. They tend to have floppy foliage that's hard to keep in shape. I'd guess that's doubly true of a prostrate form. If it's a "prostate" form, you may have to resort to Viagra to keep things from being floppy

dtree

Hi dav4 - just about everything I have needs significant winter protection where I live - it all goes into the attached garage.

dtree

I had to laugh - I couldn't think of two more incongruous words - prostate and beauty.

dtree

Thanks for the tip, Rockm. The tree is as blue as a blue atlas cedar, which is mainly why I bought it on impulse. Not enough blue in my bonsai collection.

-dtree

wabashene

Hi DTree,

Nice looking cedrus with the big bonus of a good base and taper it seems.

Have had some experience with libani and deodara and also killed off a large deodara Golden Horizon with bad soil and overwatering. True cedars are, after all, high desert trees generally speaking (Atlas Mtns & Himalayas, Lebanon/Jordan etc) so need a gritty, fast draining soil mix.

Beware of removing lower branches until you have decided on a final height and branch arrangement as I have found them reluctant to backbud or sprout new branches out of nowhere on demand.

Branches with existing foliage, however, bud well after pruning rather akin to a larch.

I've got a deodara glauca ( a smallish one) and I can prune back the branches to the last 2 or 3 sets of buds and get new budding but suspect that, like a pine, you never prune past the last set of buds or will kill the branch.

I would suggest that you will need to reduce the height of this tree to somewhere around the red line and there seems to be the beginnings of a tree shape in the vicinity.

How to reduce it leaves 2 main options - either chop to a side branch to form new leader or jin the existing top al la St. Brent Walston linked here

http://www.evergreengardenworks.com/cedars.htm

Like Mark said, the foliage on a deodara isn't as bonsai friendly as libani, bevifolia and atlantica types, but on a larger size bonsai could be manageable.

There's some decent examples shown in a Google image search for "cedrus bonsai" but not a lot.

Hope this helps.

TimR

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dtree cedrus.jpg (30.2 KB, 32 views)

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