AusBonsai

I dug this up from my old house 15-20 years ago - it had been in the garden for a while before we moved in, in 1996. It's a sasanqua, probably "Julie Ann". It hadn't flowered much at all as I grew it out, but it's started to come good in the last couple of years. One year I cut it back hard to bare wood - and the whole back of the tree just didn't shoot back at all....

I'll probably do some fine work on it this year, and see how it scrubs up.
Cat for scale: Back of the tree: Gavin

Awesome.

These are under-utilised in my opinion.

My nana loved camellia's and had a beautiful cat similar to the little cat pictured here. Nana left us a decade or so back now but I am very fond of this thread because of the good memories is has triggered. And as R3 knows - there's something about cats in bonsai photos that I love too.

That looks beautiful

I like the tree but I wonder if it would be better in a slightly larger and deeper pot?

Nice tree, great base.

Greg

Love Camelias and very nice old trunk base bark on this one

Ken

Nice . The deadwood looks quite stable ,are you treating it with anything ? Thanks for showing .

Very nice! And rarely seen...

I'm a big fan of Camellia bonsai, and look forward to seeing this as it grows into a regular flowering bonsai! Do you get trees that are covered in flowers where you are, or just spot flowering? I'm probably 20 years away from seeing mine with buds.
Nice kitteh too!

Daluke and Treeman: Yes, there aren't enough camellia bonsai. I know why - it's taken me 15 or more years to get to this. It's also not easy to find someone to "volunteer" a mature tree to start with. I'll put some fine work into it, and maybe get some glimpses of trunk through the foliage.

MJL: A cat improves everything, except my piano-playing.

EdwardH: The pot looks smaller than it is - it certainly feels adequately heavy! Since it has only really started flowering again in this pot, I'm not keen to change it.

Sno: no treatment, no decay. I really should get around to carving the back a bit.

Mel, I don't really want it covered in blossom - the flowers are a bit too gaudy for me anyway, so just a few tucked away here and there will do me. Garden camellias here are covered in blossom, but the frosts often hit the japonicas hard. They should flower fairly early as bonsai, well before 20 years, I'm just not particularly good at that side of things.

Gavin

Very nice indeed! I also want a camillea to my collection although going to hunt for a Higo variety. Perhaps a graft will be best approach.

Hi Gavin,
Love the colouring of your camellia, Mine is a common pink variety.
Mel, my garden grown camellia is now covered in flowers, it's about 5 metres tall. About three years ago I air-layered this now developing tree off it. Sorry Gavin, I don't mean to hijack your thread, but with the comments re camellias not being a common bonsai choice I couldn't resist putting mine in.
Cheers, Frank.

Thanks Gavin and Frank.

The ones I have planted in the garden here never flower reliably, and the japonica flowers tend to drop more than half without opening. Never the less, they're both (sansanqua and japonica) seem to grow well in my dreadful clay soil. I have one sasanqua in a bonsai pot, which I grew in a huge pot for 5 years, but the other sasanqua I want to dig is probably 25+years in the ground... That's going to test me!

Gavin and Frank thank you, you've given me inspiration to get in and dig soon.

Go for it Frank, another camellia can never be a bad thing.

Gavin