types of callistemon...

[Luke]

was wondering good and bad types of callistemon for bonsai.. anyone help... cheers
p.s. i don't think the ones iv seen for sale recently are the bottle brush type??

[Pup]

The biggest amount of Callistemons are cultivars over 300. There are only 30 species which are naturally occurring in Australia. 28 on the eastern seaboard and two in the south west.

It is more than likely you are seeing one or more of the cultivars. Unless you know the specifics it is hard to tell which is which.

Callistemon viminalis is the parent of a lot of the cultivars, as it is very strong. The biggest problem is there are a lot of cultivars named as Captain Cook when in fact they are not.
Although unless you are a Botanist it would be very unlikely you could tell.

If there are any members who have a better understanding of the species. Would you please help out here.

Cheers Pup

[Luke]

thanks pup, hopefully someone can help...
They are sub titled 'great balls of fire' and have more of a fig looking leaf than a bottle brush leaf. I am wondering because a couple i seen had cool trunks, bark and were fairly cheap! but if they are known be no good for bonsai id be wasting my time...
cheers
luke

[Luke]

i did some sniffin and i found sum 'ok' info...

Recently, we discussed some of the many colourful flowering plants we can use to brighten up our winter gardens.
This week, we have some of the wonderful all-year-round foliage plants that will ensure you always have plenty of colour in your surroundings.
Great Balls of Fire is a recently released form of callistemon salignus that has been hard to obtain due to difficulties propagating it.
However, Plants Management Australia now achieves a high rate of success with tissue culture and has plenty of these beautiful plants available for garden centres and nurseries.
The most outstanding feature of Great Balls of Fire is the vibrant red-cerise new growth that has earned it such a memorable name.
This beautiful Australian native has compact, dense foliage, with an expected growth of 1.8m tall and wide.
If a smaller plant is required, regular pruning should be commenced when the plants are young.
It is fast growing, looks its best grown in full sun, will cope with filtered shade, is adaptable to a wide range of soils and becomes dry-tolerant when mature.

----------> i went and got one .. will deliberate for a couple weeks on styling actions.... man i love the art of crafting small trees!
any info would be gold!
~>luke

[Luke]

just thinned out the leaves around the trunk/s and pruned the top.... will have to get pics.... it wont take me a couple weeks.... i know what i want now...

[Ash]

There are very many registered and even more unregistered Callistemon cultivars but as far as I know there is no guide or repository of information on all of them that will tell you what the parents are, or how to identify them. Many of the cultivars arise in nursery conditions from unknown parentage. Some I think have been named twice- and many have been named 'Captain Cook' although there is only one 'Captain Cook' registered.

If you are chasing an identified species, and not cultivars, or even unidentified species of known wild provenance then Yuruga nursery in northern Queensland or Yandina in southern Queensland can help as well as plenty of other specialist native nurseries. The one in my picture is a wildling of Callistemon viminalis which in the broad sense is a widely distributed and variable species. This tree was stolen early 2009 (two years after that pic) and the Police helped me to eventually recover some of my stolen bonsai including this tree which had partly died. It is now recouperating from its bad treatment and does not look quite the same anymore. Like many wild C. viminalis it flowers at then end of very long shoots (say 50 cm!). Some of the cultivats will flower on much shorter shoots which probably makes them more ideal for bonsai.

From a botanical point of view the genus Callistemon has been synonymised with Melaleuca based on a DNA phylogeny; however this has not been widely used yet and Callistemon has been around since Banksian times and is rather an entrenched name. Perhaps we could start posting pictures of our Callistemon here with their ID as a loose guide.

OK over and out
Ash

[Kunzea]

Hi Ash
some good info there for callistemonophiles.
Just a couple comments. The scientific name 'Callistemon' dates from 1814, and was coined by Robert Brown. He was a bit later than the heyday of the Banksian era. He distinguished Callistemon on the basis of one character - the presence of stamens in a single ring, essentially all free from each other, to distinguish them from the related Melaleucas (named by Linnaeus in 1767), which had stamens variously joined together. While the 'ends' of the variation between these two genera are poles apart, as you get to the middle, it can be hard to say whether you are looking at one or the other. It doesn't surprise me that they are one 'genus', though I'd expect common useage to continue for quite some time.
Kunzea

[Kunzea]

Oh yes, the second comment was just to note that the Australian National Botanic Gardens has a grant to bring together all the cultivar names in the Australian flora, and to try to consolidate the information on how to distinguish each one. It will also have images to help with the process. Once complete, it will be web accessible and a boon to all who are having problems with these names.
Kunzea

[Ash]

Excellent to know about the Callistemon cultivar project Kunzea. I really look forward to seeing it- are you at the ANBG/CANB?
Also apologies about the missuse use of 'Banksian' for 1770-1820 which overlaps with Banks' lifetime and interest in Australia.

For those insterested in Botanical history: Linnaeus (1767) described Melaleuca (Melaleuca leucadendra was one of them) before Australia was explored by Cook. Joseph Banks collected material of both 'paperbarks' and 'bottlebrushes' during Cooks voyage in 1770 and they were grown in Kew Gardens. But it was Robert Brown (another famous botanist and discoverer of Brownian motion) who accompanied Mathew Flinders that described the genus Callistemon in 1814.

When one group (in this case a genus) is latter decided to be the same as another group then the earlier name has priority over the latter name (all other things being correct and equal). In the case of Melaleuca and Callistemon the combination is is not straight forward because both genera have different species with the same specific epithets (eg. Melaleuca viridiflora and Callistemon viridiflora). So a few additional changes have to take place. In Australia the generic names Melaleuca and Callistemon are used as common names just as much as Bottlebrush and Paperbark so it is quite acceptable to keep on using them in that sense.

'Callistemon' I have used for bonsai- C. viminalis, C. polandii, C. chisholmii, C. cv. 'Mathew Flidners', C. cv. 'Little John', C. cv. 'Hinchenbrook', all are good but only the cvs have flowered regularly- 'Mathew Flinders' flowered well on short shoots but was never found after the theft , 'Hinchenbrook' has a superb dark flower colour also on short shoots, but after a couple of years the trunk is still a bit spindly- maybe should go in the ground for a bit. They all seem to like a good feed and frequent repot.

cheers Ash

[bonscythe]

Great reading here guys, I'm interested in the phylogeny/lineages of these two genera. This has affirmed some of the things I have learned so far, and taught me some more!
Ash, just curious as to how C. pollandii went as bonsai? I have seen them recently in the local botanic gardens and thought they looked like they would be great as bonsai
Got any ideas why the only cvs flowered
Cheers