I had this casuarina for 2 years now, it has been in real training for roughly one year -The first year being a "easy bonsai method" approach
I decided to have a go at working on the nebari.
The first year's "easy bonsai method" approach
Followed by me getting some guidance, and finally deciding to place the tree in a training pot to increase the taper and root ball volume [ at that time ].
Its not root bound, but I did not want to wait for it to become root bound.
In this case, root bound would probably mean lots of long lateral roots with feeder roots at the end of those long roots.
The root ball after combing it out.
I washed away most of the soil particles that were tangled in the roots.
Identifying unwanted root structures.
This root heading off in a different direction [crossing over several roots and sticking up high ] was present since the first I bought this tree.
At that time, I though I needed to keep it in order to get a nice nebari.
After I've removed the root mentioned above, that makes a big visual difference.
The roots near the base of the trunk was later untangled with great care.
Bottom view - you can see part of the tangled roots from this shot.
There were also several small tap roots forming that I removed.
After untangling the roots, I gave it another wash to remove the accumulated "mud" and reduce the length of the longer roots to have several roots of roughtly the same length.
I made sure to search and root prune at places that would still leave several feeder roots on the long roots that I was reducing in length.
The white rock was to hold a springy root in place.
Finally filled the rest of the potting soil in.
The tree was kinda unstable, so to prevent it from falling to one side I placed two small bricks on either side of the tree.
That's it.
If there's anything I've missed let me know
Cheers
Xavier
