[NATURAL] Eucalyptus leptophleba - Starfox

[Starfox]

I'll start off with this one, it is a Eucalyptus leptophleba I have grown from seed. Also commonly known as the Molloy Red Box. The seed was from Royston Petrie that cost $5.41for a pack of about 50 squillion seeds.
I haven't done anything to this one aside from cut the side from the pot to help facilitate the leaning habit that this one has.

Being a tree from FNQ I'm surprised that they are doing alright in my climate but I have two of them growing well, the third died when I lifted the pot and broke the escaped roots. I think I should of then put it in a tray of water, they are thirsty trees but that shouldn't surprise as they are from the tropics.
I know they back bud well and low down after an autumn trunk chop, can form a lignotuber and the leaves have a very intense vicks smell, more so than usual. It should develop a very rough and fissured bark over time.

That is about all I know so far apart from now is not really the time to do anything to it so I'll wait for warmer weather before whatever I do next. I don't intend to keep it hanging below the roots in a cascade style but it has put some interesting movement in the trunk at least.

The base is either equal too or just under 1cm at the soil.

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[Daluke]

Great start. I’m looking forward to seeing this ones progress

[Starfox]

So I figure I can update this one for the April update seeing as it's not likely I will do anything to it before the end of the month and we are only just heading into spring now although it doesn't feel like it.
The only thing I have done to this was place a stone under the trunk to lift it out of the soil and other than that it has just grown most of winter.
It'll need a repotting this season and that is the only thing I'm worried about as I haven't worked the roots on this species before but I have my kitty litter delivery so am ready to go once the weather gets warmer. At that point I'll probably cut it back to the sets of branches closest the pot, probably.

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[Starfox]

Well for better or worse I gave this one a repot and chop today with a massive dose of 'fingers crossed'. It is still pushing out new growth and now our night temps are up and shouldn't drop below 15deg C until October so hopefully the timing is ok.

Firstly as it was before.

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I kind of didn't know where to head because of the lean but found a nice little natural bendy part so figured to make that the new leader.

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It was getting a tad pot bound.

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My soil mix is a bunch of Orchid bark, lava rock and diatomaceous earth. The DE holds a lot of water I find so hopefully this will aid in it's recovery.

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I knocked up a box yesterday which will be it's new home for a while. Chopped at the leader so I am hoping for more buds after that, I have kept the two lower branches mainly for trunk thickening but we will see what happens. A rock to prop the main trunk out a bit and some hastily applied wire more to lift it up than anything else, the tree seems very floppy so not even sure it will set to wire at this point.

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[Rory]

Thats a great start. Looking good.

[Starfox]

Cheers Rory, fingers crossed it makes it.

[Starfox]

OK, I figure I'll make this my next update as I doubt I'll do much to it between now an Oct 31.

Firstly, the May repot and light chop went quite well. It only dropped the lowest branch which is no biggy but it didn't back bud at all. One formed but it didn't push on. The tree however just kept on pushing growth and elongating at the tips, good for trunking up I guess. The wire needed to be of a bigger gauge though as it quickly flopped over and quickly cut in too so that went by the end of July.

This was it on the 11th of August.

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So at this point I would of like more options to play with and didn't feel like chopping it back again was the best of ideas so I wondered what a defoliation would do. I tested it out on it's sister tree first to make sure it wouldn't kill it and in days it had burst out with growth everywhere so I felt confident enough to try it out on this one.

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Sure enough it went bananas. This is the tree today nearly a month and a half after defoliation.

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It's rapidly thickening up at the base too.

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While it may not look like much now I'm finally seeing a direction, front and plan moving forward with this now.
I doubt it will need a repot next year so I'm going to leave it be until next years warmer weather before doing much else to it, I'll likely wire it and maybe try and keep on top of it from elongating too much and hopefully with all this new growth lower down it'll help with thickening the trunk and picking new leaders.

[Rory]

What an awesome update for people to read. Great job mate.

[Ryceman3]

Looking back on what you started with compared to what you have now ...
That base is coming along nicely and your branching options are much more abundant. The defoliation definitely helped encourage options - nice job, nice progression!

[Starfox]

Cheers guys!

Yeah the defoliation did what I was hoping for, not had a great deal of reaction from pinching but that could be a timing issue more than anything.
Hopefully it will help out with a bit of clarity moving forward too and I can start to bring it together.

[Starfox]

Well update time I guess, it's been a crazy couple of days here and I need to declutter my head a bit so maybe bonsai will help.

Not a great deal to add since the last update really, this thing has continued to push growth over winter so I have just let it go. I did wire the trunk a little mainly for some stability because as you can see it really just wants to elongate and flop around.

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Honestly am still finding it tough to get my head around it so I made a call out in a facebook group to see if anybody had any example of these in the wild and surprisingly did get a couple of takers, even Dean Nicolle was kind enough to share a pic.
The rest can be found on flickr in the gallery below, I do quite like the one that has a ficus growing out the trunk and the two that are leaning over the dirt track.

https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=euc ... eptophleba

Anyway they seem to be some tall skinny trunks which probably goes a long way in explaining why it just wants to elongate all the time. Might of picked a tough species but we'll see how it goes.
I'd love to just let it keep growing and see what the natural flop of the thing could create but really need to start thinking about getting some sort of refining going if it is to be anything close to a bonsai in a pot. Thankfully it's a bit early in the year so I have some thinking time.
I'll get all snippy snippy on it soon and maybe repot late summer/early autumn other than that I don't really know yet.

[Starfox]

Bonus mid-summer update.

So despite my earlier comments re a late summer/autumn repot back in May I saw something and went ahead and repotted it seeing as the last repot was in a May and it survived well enough I figured all should be OK.
Also decided to get it in a bonsai pot and wire it a bit.

The roots were in good shape and plenty of them, seems they like the sanicat DE. I think the moisture retention it gives is a real bonus compared to akadama and good for this tropical gum. It was practically a bare root as well, not intentional but just the nature of the soil mix while raking the roots out.

This was it on May 9th.

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And the roots.

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At the time I thought I should maybe partially defoliate the top, partly because I was concerned about maybe removing too many roots but also because it was far too tall for my liking and was hoping for some lower down shoots. Turns out that was a mistake as the top never budded out again and it appears to have aborted that branch.

In a way it clears the path forward to it isn't a great loss and I'll have to use what is there which is closer to the height I want it anyway. I does lead me to believe that a later repot is probably more ideal for this tree though. I should have more faith in myself next time.
Other than that it has coped with it real well and still growing strong even in the smaller container so that is positive and I now have an idea where I'm heading with it too so even better. The bark on this is pretty cool as well.

I'm not settled on the front yet, don't think it will be this view and the pot is growing on me but again that is liable to change as well. For the moment it needs a bit more wire and probably clip those ends before they run away again and hopefully I can get it to fill out somehow, we'll see where we are at for the next update I guess.


This is the tree today 26/7

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[greg27]

Nice progression, I'm keen to see where you end up with this one.

At the time I thought I should maybe partially defoliate the top, partly because I was concerned about maybe removing too many roots but also because it was far too tall for my liking and was hoping for some lower down shoots. Turns out that was a mistake as the top never budded out again and it appears to have aborted that branch.

I love that about eucalypts - true Aussie spirit. It's almost as if the tree is thinking "yea I could put a bunch of effort into regrowing leaves on that branch... nah bugger it I'll let it die off".

[Matt S]

I think the change in direction of the main trunk is a good outcome. Does this species hold onto dead branches like some Eucs? If that’s the case you could incorporate the dead bits.

Matt.

[Starfox]

[/quote]

Nice progression, I'm keen to see where you end up with this one.

At the time I thought I should maybe partially defoliate the top, partly because I was concerned about maybe removing too many roots but also because it was far too tall for my liking and was hoping for some lower down shoots. Turns out that was a mistake as the top never budded out again and it appears to have aborted that branch.

I love that about eucalypts - true Aussie spirit. It's almost as if the tree is thinking "yea I could put a bunch of effort into regrowing leaves on that branch... nah bugger it I'll let it die off".

I think I am much clearer now on where I want it to go provided there are no major set backs, I am enjoying this tree a lot now.

It must be my spirit tree, lol. Perfectly understandable behaviour.
I probably should of predicted it with the lower branches left on, I may keep one but they are sacrifices more for trunk thickening because of the time frame.

I think the change in direction of the main trunk is a good outcome. Does this species hold onto dead branches like some Eucs? If that’s the case you could incorporate the dead bits.

Matt.

I have considered incorporating it for sure if, that´s why it´s still there. I´ll see how it fits in when I wire up the other part. The pics in the flickr link above can be hard to see on a small screen but they definitely look like they hold on to dead branches so it could go well with the natural element. I think it was those pics that gave me some clarity to change the direction