I originally wrote a post in Vietnamese about this pine in January, 2008. That is why some of the photos has
foreign writing on them.
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I bought this black pine a few weeks before the 9/June/2006. It was a field grown tree, for general landscaping,
not bonsai. I was told it was about 10 years old at the time. It had just been dugged up and potted into a plastic
bag in 2005. I also paid $125.00 for it.
I think it is the same crop as the pine I posted in Air layering a black pine.
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These are the first photos I took of this pine on the 27/January/2008:
The dealer originally selected this pine for his keeping. I was taken by it somewhat. He told me that when he took
those from the grower, they were all nearly 2 meters tall. He reduced this pine more than half the original height.
On a subsequent visit, I saw that he put it aside for sale.
I cannot remember when I repotted it into this big box. I kept looking at it, and I think I knew the reason why he wanted
to get rid of it -- the leader branch was hopeless, it looked like a piece of a pole screwed on top of another pole, the joint
was ugly. And furthermore, there appeared to be enough branches, but careful examinations show that the distribution
pattern made some of the branches useless.
I was disappointed and silently cursed myself for selecting such a bad material, while there were abundant choices.
I think around October 2006 I finally stopped feeling stupid. And also at that time, the tree showed strong growing
signs. I cut off the leader that the dealer selected, thereby reducing the height a bit more. I selected the youngest,
smallest, and the topmost branch to be a new leader; and wired it into position. This is the leader in the above photos.
I left the leader grow un-checked while maintaining other branches to develop ramification.
I realised that I need to eliminate two branches. But I did not know which ones. So I just wired them all before the photos
were taken.
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The branches have several undesirable patterns.
As can be seen from the above photo, the two middle branches form a bar, a plus (+) sign, or opposite one another. One
must be cut off.
The above photo also shows a bar formed with the two lowest branches. One must be cut off.
I planned to cut off branches A and B; I think the remaining ones would give this pine a pleasing appearance.
The vertical distances between the branches are also a bit close. But this might not necessary be a drawback.
I have tried hard to understand the concept of the front view, but I could not get it. Early on, I concentrated on only
one view, and as the results, the other three other views have been ugly.
I do not want to repeat this mistake. So I changed to adopt the thinking that within the 360 degrees, the composition
must look good at every angle. This idea has also been put forward in one of the Bonsai Today issues, I think by an
American person.
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In the past, I have experienced sudden regrets after cutting off branches -- justify or not, I hate the feeling just the same.
To avoid sudden regrets, I used plastic bags to cover branches A and B, this gave me an opportunity to "see" the final
tree after all cuttings. I recorded this step in the following photos:
The idea of using stuff to cover branches to be cut off has been discussed in an issue of Bonsai Today, that is where
I get the idea from.
I felt that it looks all right without branches A and B. So I proceeded to cut branch B off first.
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After branch B was cut off:
I still felt right, so I proceeded to cut off branch A -- the final branch that I wanted to cut off.
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And this is the tree after the two branches were removed:
At first glance, the above photos shows a balanced arrangement of branches. But branch A pointed too much
to the right, this created an empty space on the left -- this space must be filled later on as ramifications are
developing.
The above photos re-enforced the empty space discussed previously. It looked so empty from this view, I actually
thought about pulling branch A outward (or to the right from this view) a little.
Branch B pointed too much to the left, it must be moved to the right a little. But because it naturally grew to the
left, so moving it to the right would make a very un-natural angle; to achieve this, the main body must be twisted to
the desired angle. Fortunately the new leader was still young, with enough wiring, this can be can be carried out
fairly easily.
The above photo also emphasises the empty space.
The above photo shows the view that I like best.
* Some basic measurements:
- Tree height: 66 cm -- from the soil surface in the box.
Trunk diameter: 12 cm -- on the soil surface in the box.
Trunk diameter: 6 cm -- immediately above the first visible root.
Box width: 38 cm.
Box length: 56 cm.
Box height: 19 cm.
I planned to develop five main branches for this pine, I did contemplate seven, but that would make it a bit taller while
I quite like this height.
On the 22/May/2008, I did another re-wiring. I did finish off all the points discussed above -- including making the ffith
branch.
The differences after re-wiring were subtle compared to the above photos. I could not borrow a camera, so I did not
recorded the works.
The major achievement of this re-wiring was filling out the discussed empty space -- bringing the two lowest branches
into a straight-line.
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I repotted it into a proper bonsai pot sometimes in August 2008. Even though it has been in good health for two years --
ever since I took possession of it in September 2006 -- the root ball was not any bigger than when I took it out of the
plastic bag. This helps me understand why bonsai authors state that older pines are repotted every three years or so.
In November, 2008, I gave it a little trim. The following photos were taken on 01/January/2009:
The above two views show the ugly sides of this tree. I must concentrate on improving these two sides. I have not achieved
the objective that set out from the beginning "within the 360 degrees, the composition must look good at every angle."
These above two sides of this tree look balanced.
The view from above -- (the fifth dimension
)Branch number five cannot be seen. Because it is still short, and obscured by the young shoots which are pointing
upward.
At this point, I am happy with the development of this tree. I do not have any sinking feelings about it any more.
* Some basic measurements:
- Tree height: 68 cm -- from the soil surface in the box.
Trunk diameter: 12 cm -- on the soil surface in the box.
Trunk diameter: 6 cm -- immediately above the first visible root.
Pot diameter: 41 cm (about.)
Pot height: 15 cm.
otherwise. My father bought this one, he gave it to me. Possibly out of a sense of obligation, I took it and paid him
back the money. This one shows sign of peeling "paint". It will look quite ugly in the future.
(If later on, I found any mis-spellings or grammar errors I would edit this post directly. I will not change the content.)
