need advice

mwall

I posted a question about cherry tree yesterday. I did not receive any replies, I have some more questions. Home depot has a cherry tree i like, the trunk is about 4in but it is grafted, nice though. It would need a trunk chop, roots are good. The tree is only 20.00 dollars, but do not want to waste it, if it can not take a trunk chop. I need advice, please help.

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BonsaiGreenhorn

to be honest, I know nothing of the tree you're talking about, but take the risk anyways.. in bonsai we lose trees (& money.) Its part of the deal.

-Evan

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Newt

I have never heard of one of these. I suspect that is why no one has answered is cause no one knows, otherwise people are quick to answer. I have a couple barbadoes cherries but they are different.

Newt

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mwall

Since there is hardly anything on the internet about van cherry, I don,t know what to do. I know its only 20.00 but I could use that on something else. Main concern is if it could handle a thrunk chop and bud out again.

Vance Wood

Lets do some deductive reasoning here. Is the tree sold in your climate zone as a yard tree? If so it is most likely a member of the Prunus family. If it is a tropical species you are on your own.

If it is Prunus then a trunk chop would be possible for the most part. But error on the side of caution is advisable. I would chop down to a point way above where I would like to chop the first year and see what it does. After assessing the response you should get some sort of idea as to how the tree is going to respond.

However; if you plan on cutting below the graft you will lose the tree you are paying for and be stuck with the stock tree which could be anything in the family hardy enough and cheap enough to use as stock for grafting purposes. Keeping that in mind you must decide how far down you want to cut. Also, it is often the case that cutting the scion (the good side of the graft) will stimulate a good deal of sucker growth from the stock plant (the bad side of the graft). This will take over and starve out the scion if it is not aggressively controlled.

pootsie

What Vance said, plus the fact that grafting scars can get really ugly before long.

pootsie

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Vance Wood

Pootsie is right. Trees grown for the yard, especially if they are grown for fruit and not just the flowers, can have real ugly scars over time. There are some odd techniques used in the grafting of fruit trees to make them dwarfs that produce large fruit. We have one of them in our yard, a dwarf McIntosh apple. The grafting scar looks like a giant goiter. I can tell you how this happens if anyone is interested but for these purposes this should sufice.

mwall

Thanks for the help, it is a prunus. the graft is very low, I would trunk chop at least 10in up from that. I hate to see a beautiful trunked tree not be used for a bonsai. But the excitment I had when I saw it is diminishing, I have been resurching hard and can hardly find anything on them( no pics). It might be able to be done, but maybe I should put my time and money into something more common for bonsai, after all I am fairly new to this. Thanks eveybody

Vance Wood

I don't have any idea how important twenty dollars is to you but you could always buy the tree now and work on it at a later time when you feel more confident in doing so. You are right a good trunk is hard to pass up.

One word about Cherries. They are difficult to work with. It is almost mandatory that you use aluminum wire because they are highly reactive to copper. But the flowers are worht the effort, one of the most beautiful in bonsai.