Need Opinion: best Shohin formal upright or broom

007

If the style you are looking for is Flat Topped, then Bald Cypress is indeed your best candidate. As mentioned, not only is this tree relatively easy to grow, but the flat top style is in line with this species natural growth patterns.

Now, if you are more interested in a slender upright broom, then I would have to suggest the Chinese elm, or a Seiju Elm (it has GREAT bark). I had an elm in my collection for a while that was about 14" tall, with about a 1" trunk that only had foliage in the top 4-5" of the tree. Its tough to find immature elm stock in this shape (at least in my area) as most of them are trained into the silly "S" shape, but it is very easily achieved by taking cuttings. You could easily achieve this look in less than 5 years from an elm cutting.

__________________

Advertisement

ozzerbon

G'day Mate,

Just type Flat top bonsai in Google, and you'll get tons of info', you do know that it is a South African Bonsai style, so think along those lines.

Success,
Nigel

__________________
http://pictures.bonsaitalk.com/user/ozzerbon
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ozzerbon/

breravin

I like that elm suggestion 007, thanks. I'm not familiar with seiju elm, I'll look into it.

Now my next question would have to be, would it be likely that a local/standard nursery in MA would have such a tree, or are Seija Elms and Bald Cypress a rarer type of tree? I tend to work with native/local trees, so I don't pay much attention to nurseries. I realize you guys probably don't have the MA nursery stock memorized ;-) but if they're generally more difficult to find, I'll save myself the trouble of calling all the local nurseries.

007

Seiju is not a rare tree by any means, but I'd be very surprised if you even found one in a nursery.

Evergreen Gardenworks carries them and is also very helpful. If you tell them what you are looking for, they will try and find a fitting tree for you. eBay also has them once in a while from a place called CS Nursery in Michigan.

Here's a close up of the bark on an older Seiju Elm, and an image of a tree I found that sounds like what you are trying to achieve . . .

Attached Images

	Seiju bark 2.jpg (69.5 KB, 9 views)
	broom elm.JPG (63.9 KB, 12 views)

__________________

breravin

Yep, very familiar with Evergreen Gardenworks. If you don't think they'll be found in a nursery, I'll be happy to go there.

One more question: In people's experience, are there any tropical species that could pull this style off successfully?