OMC's First White Pine

dbz12fan

I too have just started working with pines. I feel that it is better to start early because they take so long to get a nice trunk. It is also nice to have trees that you dont need to touch for several months and even years.

Pines with large trunks are too expensive for me to afford, so I bought several seedlings and just potted them into the biggest pots that I have (with good draining soil of course to prevent root rot). I am hoping that in five (for the small), ten (for the medium), even 20 (for the largest trunks) years that I will have some great stuff to work with. There trunks right now are about 1/4-1/3 an inch in diameter.

I do have an advantage over a lot of people here- time and plenty of it (being that I am 14 years old). Well at least I am hoping that I have a lot of time .

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Charles Bevan
Vero Beach, Fl

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TreeBay

One or more low branches help to thicken the trunk in that region in order to develop taper, which this tree really can benefit from. Later, they can be removed and the stub carved off into a snag.

Regards,

Matt

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Tim Ford

nice tree carl
ive just started out with a whight pine and finding things quite hard,for instance ballanceing the branches out so not to get that handle bar effect, as showing on your pic, i,am also struggling with the apex there seems to be to many branches up top.after looking at yours i,m begging to waunder if i have cut too many branches out, i,m looking for the shape of say an old oak or elm , do you think i,ve gone the wrong way about thing here,

TIM

Carl_Bergstrom

Hi Tim,


Without photos, there's very little I can say about design on your tree. Not that I'm anything like a white pine expert, anyway.

Just in case anyone is interested, here's an update on that white pine of mine, taken this past July. Still a long way to go, but improving.



Best regards,
Carl

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spoonman

looks like you done a good job there. grrr i really wanna do my black pine, only a few more months till i can.

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No mountain, yet your leaves extend
Beyond your own world into mine
Perennial wands, unfolding in my thought
The budding evergreen of time."
-Kathleen Raine, The Trees in Tubs

FredL

Carl, thanks for the opportunity ti critique this tree. For relative beginners like my self, it gives us the opportunity to get our "critiques critiqued".

OK, lets see what the world thinks of these remarks.

1. There are a couple of knobs at the base where branches were apparently removed in the past. Would it not be a good idea to remove them closer to the trunk with a concave pruner?

2. 2/3 of the way up the trunk, there are a pair of "T-bar" branches. Should one of them go? This might require - well, would require - rearrangement of the branches above and below.

3. A top branch should be selected to form an apex and wired into place. The top of the tree, generally, needs refinement to look like a top.

4. In general, the branches need more movement (curves) in the horizontal plane. This shouldn't be too difficult with the wiring already in place. Also. in the vertical plane, the lift of many of the tips needs a little more exageration.

I won't comment on the positives, of which the tree has several.

Hope this has been helpful and I hope to get comments on the accuracy and value of my comments.

Fred

bwaynef

In your first after photo, from the first branch on the left to the 3rd branch on the left the trunk seems uninterestingly straight. In your most recent after photo, there seems to be more movement. I can't tell if you introduced bends in the trunk, or refined the foliage now so that its hidden....or if it was simply hidden before with the less-refined foliage pads. Could you comment on that?

Carl_Bergstrom

Great observation - I'd be happy to comment. First of all, anything that is going right with this tree is due to my teacher. I've been working on this tree with him for the past year, and I'm learning a great deal by watching his plan unfold for this tree. He took what was a ramrod straight branch, shaped that branch into gentle curves, and by refining the foliage, drew these shapes out further.

Fred's comments are mostly reasonable, but there's a time scale issue. I'm thinking on a 5 to 10 year timescale to fix the glaring problems with this tree. No point in hurrying with white pine! No point in creating new wounds until I've got the roots as I want them, to maximize strength of growth. No point in cutting back too close with concave cutters; as best as I can tell, the knobs to which Fred refers actually were been cut back a second time this spring and sealed. The apex certainly needs work, and will be formed in due time. The bar branches must be removed or disguised; but again, in due time. The branches need movement, but back-budding is even more important at this stange; we're balancing the two.

I'll keep posting yearly updates and we can see how this process proceeds.

With my best regards,
Carl

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FredL

Carl, thanks for the reesponse. I found it very gratifying. First that you confirmed the points I made. I'm still VERY hesitent in my critiques; I simply haven't had enough experience to feel very sure of what I think I see. Second, in the time frame you're working in. A couple of years ago, I decided that I was going to work in a 10 year time frame with the seedlings I was growing and material I was collecting. I got alot of flack when I mentioned this, more at another site I was participating in then here, but nevertheless, enough for me to conclude that a large part of the bonsai world thought a 10 year time horizon was idiotic. Glad to find another idiot out there that wants to think in terms of as much as ten years!

Fred