28 year old Green Island Ficus

[andrew_k]

Hi, I only found this forum yesterday. Fantastic place, look forward to having a good read and learning from everyone.

As of a year ago I lost all my collection bar three. Fortunately my favorite tree survived (barely!)
This plant was in my Grandfather's yard in a pot for 22 years. He planted it the same year I was born. Although he has been a very keen gardener all his life, this plant was never trained as a bonsai until he gave it to me in 2002. I don't have any pictures from then, but it was a large plant with 5 thick trunks extending from the base. I removed all but 2 and began carefully shaping the plant over the years.

Here are some pics of the tree over the years:

May 2004


October 2005



February 2006


December 2008


February 2010




The last picture is now the front, as in my mind the crown leaning further forward is more engaging for the viewer and the lean of the dominant trunk balances well with the opposite lean of the base.

There is MUCH refining to do, and obviously cycles of leaf size reduction. Previous to 2009 this plant had spent its entire life in SE QLD, and the cold winter frosts we get at my new house (Dandenong Ranges) caused a lot of stress for this tree. I'm going to give it a year of feeding and care to fully recover before I start shaping again. The next move is to transfer it to a large box instead of the pot so that I can rotate/reshape the root ball to fit in the pot with the new front parallel with the longest side of the pot.

If anyone has any specific advice regarding caring for Green Island Ficus, I'm all ears. Especially regarding encouraging it to fruit!

[craigw60]

Hi Andrew,
I have no experience of green island fig but do grow some port jacksons here in Olinda. During the cold months which seem to have started early this year, the important thing is to keep your tree dry. Cold and dry seems to be ok but cold and wet is a disaster. Your fig will have a much shorter growing season than it did in QLD where by all accounts here they never really stop.
Craig

[Steven]

G'day Andrew and welcome to AusBonsai!

I'm glad you have found us mate
Sorry to hear about loosing your collection mate. What was the cause? Great news that your favourite survived particularly due to the sentimental attachment you obviously have.
I can't help you with specific requirements to your Green Island Ficus however one of our members Noah78 has recently moved from the QLD tropics to Southern Victoria. He has a very good thread here documenting his experiences moving interstate and aclimatising trees. (Just click the link to view).

I look forward to watching your ficus progress as you refine it further.

Regards,
Steven

[Jamie]

welcome to the forum mate

you will find heaps of info hear for sure, but maybe not to much on Green island ficus i havent seen to many used as bonsai but yours would have to be one of the biggest. it has a very chinese feel to it, penjing. good luck with getting it acclimatised i am sure you will be able to

you can get these humidity tents for bunnings for about 20-30 bucks, they are used for growing tomatoes actually but will definately help with figs down south, they will keep the warmth and humidity up even during some cooler days.

look forward to seeing more


jamie

[andrew_k]

Thank you for the friendly welcome

During the cold months which seem to have started early this year, the important thing is to keep your tree dry. Cold and dry seems to be ok but cold and wet is a disaster.

Excellent advice, thank you. I'm at Tecoma, about 500m south of Sherbrooke Forest. This past winter the leaves suffered severe frost burn and I had to make an impromptu mini-hothouse out of plastic sheeting to protect this and my other surviving tropical. I really want to have something more permanent in place before this winter.

Sorry to hear about loosing your collection mate. What was the cause?

I moved to Melbourne for work 3.5 years back and couldn't afford to have my plants shipped down, nor did I have a car at the time to drive them down myself. My only choice was to leave them with my parents, who despite their good intentions don't have half a green thumb between them. I had 14 plants that were well into training, 2 years later I had 3. My father very kindly drove down the remaining three last April, an exercise that very nearly killed this conifer (grown from seedling):



I don't mind starting again, as I absolutely LOVE deciduous trees and now not only do I have a garden of well established deciduous trees, I can grow the deciduous bonsai I always wanted in QLD.

you can get these humidity tents for bunnings for about 20-30 bucks, they are used for growing tomatoes actually but will definately help with figs down south, they will keep the warmth and humidity up even during some cooler days.

Brilliant. Sounds like just what I need. I have the OK from my partner to build a greenhouse, but with a baby arriving 3 weeks ago money is suddenly VERY tight!

[Ash]

G'Day Andrew,

You will be off to a good start with this tree. I have grown several Green Island Figs (GIF)- although they are slow to develop compared to other figs they are well worth it- and you have a head start. In the earlier training stages I allow the shoots to elongate to have three or four nodes and then prune them back to an earlier downward pointing bud. This encourages several dormant buds to initiate rather than just the endmost upwards pointing one. It increases branching which increases leaf density and reduces leaf size. You can defoliate here- but I dont do it very often because the regular pruned leaf size is quite pleasing on a GIF. They can handle going years and years without a repot- but I repot every year up here.
Fig tree branches don't often 'hang' or slope downwards in the way conifer branches do, or in the way frequently emulated in bonsai. It took me years to try an change my perception to grow a fig to look like a fig- bit too late for some of my first bonsai. A great style is something like the attached picture which is well within the capabilities of the material you have from your Grandfather. Many figs naturally have broad flat crowns. The GIF is usually a shrub that grows along the ground but maybe up to 1-2 m tall.

If you want aerial roots but your humidity is too low there are several things you can do. Place the tree over a stone filled water tray during your wettest part of the year- when new roots emerge keep them moist by spraying daily. Take a drinking straw slit it longitudinally, cut it to length and place it over the emerging root. The humidity in the straw will be higher than outside as the season dries away again and your aerial root will reach the ground, and nice and vertical too.

regards
Ash

[craigw60]

Thats fantastic info Ash. Andrew is a lucky guy. Our wettest season is also our coldest so I suspect the air root work would have to be done during summer with some artificial humidity is that correct ?
Craig

[andrew_k]

Great response Ash, thank you for your advice. Separating and adding density to the foliage clouds is something I've struggled with on this tree, but I'm happy enough with the overall shape now that I'm ready to focus on this aspect.

I assume I need a second GIF to allow fruit to be pollinated? It bore large quantities of fruit when my Grandfather had it, and has done so once while I've had it but never again.

[Jamie]

interesting andrew.... have you started recieving the baby bonus yet???

[Ash]

G'Day again Andrew,
Ficus need a species specific pollinator wasp to set seed, but they do not need it to produce figs. The figs are not a fruit in the traditional sense but rather an inflorescence (multiple flowering organ) called a syconia. The wasp enters through the tiny pore (ostiole) at the top when she looses her wings and transfers pollen onto the tiny flowers inside as she lays her eggs in the flowers. The larvae develop in galled flowers and then emerge as wasps- have an orgy- and the fertilized females escape through little holes in the wall of the fig which are bored by the males (who never fly or even leave the fig). So you need a pollinator to set seed- but because the figs are flowering structures you do not need one to produce a fig.

Thus only indigenous figs come up from seed as weeds- unless the pollinator has been introduced, or unless the native pollinator switches host and does the trick.

GIFs are probably the most reliable fig produces as bonsai- plenty of light and P and K rich fertilizer will do the trick if it is nice and warm. Other figs such as Ficus obliqua have never produce a fig on my bonsai in fifteen years. Buts GIFS do much of the year.

regards
Ashley

[andrew_k]

Wow, depending on a particular wasp?! Good thing ficus are easy to grow from cuttings then.
I will make sure to increase the P &K leading into next spring; the tree looks great covered in tiny fruit.

interesting andrew.... have you started recieving the baby bonus yet???

Not yet, but that'll be going towards nappies I'm sure!

[Jamie]

if your wife is breast feeding thenyou will find that a decent amount of the bonus can be saved, or........spent on trees or tree stuff

when we had the youngest one we got the bonus in payments, and i was the only one working with her mum at home we found that we could get on easy even buying nappies and stuff. its the formula that kills the pocket, that stuff is dear and you need heaps of it, we got lucky our little one went from breast feeding to full cream milk with no inbetween of fomula

jamie

[Jerry Meislik]

Andrew,
I like how nicely your tree has progressed.
My only concern is that the low branch is getting too heavy relative to the longer upright trunk. I would try over time to keep the low branch from getting heavier by keeping it trimmed back and allowing more growth on the upright trunk.
Just my opinion.
Jerry

[andrew_k]

Thank you Jerry. I agree with your observation; the lower branch is even more out of balance now that the former back is the front. I have always struggled with this as the lower branch has generally been more healthy and had substantially more new growth each growing cycle.

[Bonsaifan]

Found this old post but was hoping to find out how the tree has done in the Melbourne climate? Looking to find some starters as I liked the oval shaped leaves...