Melaleuca linariifolia

[Mitchell]

Hi all!

Here's some stock I purchased recently. Nursery stock left to ground grow, originally planted in a 200mm pot. Tree was about 5m high, now stands at 1.2m.

I'm potting it up now after soaking in seasol, this is where I'm up too. The base of the pot is still in there somewhere, my hopes is due to compaction the roots have fused to form a large 200mm base. We shall see after I sort it out a bit.

[Mitchell]

So things went better than hoped. Didn't get the fused base I thought might exist, I got a solid trunk the entire depth of the pot.
Cut back roots that were in the pot, wrapping the trunk exposing it, the roots I dug from the ground shall support the tree. I am very happy with the slight taper in the trunk where I removed the pot from, as it is needed for the final image I have in mind for the tree. Still need to tidy up the roots on the trunk and cut them back to blend into the trunk. I suppose I could have left them, and tried fusing them, but they looked like they wanted to go.

It's turning out to be a rather large specimen of a Mel, if I can somehow turn it into bonsai I will be a happy man indeed. After it recovers I intend on lopping another 30cm of the top to induce taper with some carving.

[alpineart]

Hi Mitchell , Aussie Native , 2 man tree , this will be very interesting watching the progress of your tree .Keep us posted .Cheers Alpineart

[Mitchell]

Not sure about these two man trees, the other big callistimon almost fell off the bonsai stand whilst cleaning up roots onto me, it weighs 35Kgs and I was almost a pancake.

[MattA]

Mitchell,

I want to know the nursery... thats awesome stock to have found. I have dug a few big melaleuca & some I have really had to hack at the roots taking almost nothing, they all thump on as long as given plenty of water.

I would even be tempted to go the whole hog & chop this down to about 30cm and grow it out from there. Am fairly certain linariifolia are one of the mel's that will shoot from old wood. Most of the time I just go that route & let the tree tell me if it could take it or not.

Matt

[MelaQuin]

Linearfolias shoot from old wood but the one I had never shot where it was needed. Could be necessary to cut back hard to encourage this.
The tree is a fine specimen - great trunk. If you cut it back harder now so one of the branches was the new leader you would introduce taper and it thickens fairly quickly. I'm not sure about carving on a tree with such textured bark. I would let the bark be the eyecatcher and keep any carving to the barest minimum. Better to let the tree callous over any branch removal and just let that bark shine.

[Mitchell]

Matt heres the thread. The nursery is in the WestRyde area. viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1805&p=76655&hilit ... own#p76655
with any other trunk like this mate I would just knock it straight down, the callistemon may get that treatment. However with this tree I wish to keep the height atleast 1m and try to create a large bonsai with it. There were many other bases available for chopping that would have given a better base, I left those and took this as I wanted to retain its trunk.


Hi MelaQuin, I have considered cutting back to 1 leader, it is indeed a possibility. When I mentioned carving, I was meaning to the rear of the trunk, not the front. Indeed you would be brave to attempt carving on the front, as the bark appears to be 1cm thick for most of the trunk.

[AGarcia]

Decent material. Hard to find old stock in nurseries nowadays. How about layering above the root mess? If it is too tall, maybe move the layer up the tree to get your desired height. Good luck and keep the us all informed on progress.

AG

[Mitchell]

"Hard to find old stock in nurseries nowadays." I would say it's just about impossible to find stock like this in nurseries, possibly someone selling landscaping trees. The "root mess" is infact solid trunk, the remaining root stubs will be cut back to blend with the trunk.

The tree was purchased specifically for the height and presence, my challenge now is to turn it into bonsai. If I had wanted the foliage closer to the base I would have bought a different tree.

[Mitchell]

Initially, I want to remove the remainder of the top trunk, I left a fair amount in order to blend it with the branching. When I bring it down I also want to be able to create, a believable trunk to main branch transition something like this virt.

[Mitchell]

Had a bit of an accident. Looks like it was burnt to a crisp.....
Seriously though, it was intentional...

[kcpoole]

Nice tree mitchell

Figured it was a Riverview find .

I hope to get down next weekend to have another look around as that I believe will the last trading day before finally closing down. The nursery has now been sold!

Ken

[Ozmad]

Hi Mitchell

You could air-layer the tree just above the 2 and 3 branches. This will help bring it back to a 1 person tree. Then grow on the bottom half to start another tree.

[rch003]

wait...you burnt your tree....

[Taffy]

Yes RC - he's a CRUEL MAN!!!

Mate, have a look through some of the topics from the guys that grow natives - or use the search function. You'll see a number of references to it.