Guy wrote:I have read that generally the quicker the plant grows the shorter the lifespan-possibly something to do with size and configuration of cells-if so would this be species specific or for all plants----------just wondering if forcing fast growth early could affect the "solidity" of the basic structure of the tree--------any thoughts?
This is something I have wondered about myself from time to time. I do not know the answer, but I have come up with my own thoughts on the matter. Most of the trees I grow in Bonsai culture have a life span of over a hundred years, some thousands of years. Humans have a life span of about 80 odd years, give or take. I am, as of a week ago 61 years young. Do the math!!!
One interesting thing about rapid growth that was pointed out to me years ago by a good friend who lived in Sydney. I owned my Nursery in Darwin at the time and had taken to growing a few Junipers for the local Bonsai Tragics. I had a few hundred J. Procumbans nana and a like number of J. Squamata growing, which were 2 years old when said friend visited Darwin for a AABC Visiting Tutor Weekend. Anyhow, she was roaming around the Nursery looking for something to use for her Demo when she spoted the Junipers. When told the age of the stock she was excited and thought they were equivelant to 6 or 8 year old stock grown in Sydney. I had done nothing special with them, other than put them up into large pots. As I said, they were destined to be chopped up by Bonsai nuts only and I really didn't think there was much of a future for them in Darwin. (I got that bit wrong, but thats another story, surfice to say some of you Sydney people might have some of those trees in your own collections now
) Anyhow, said lady grabbed a couple of the larger ones, which she took along to use. During her demo on one of the trees, which had a trunk of around 25-30mm or so, she commented on how easy the trees were to bend and she was doing bends she didn't think possible with stock that size. She showed how to use raffia during the first demo, but during the second tree she didn't bother as she wanted to see what would happen.
After she returned to Sydney I got into a few of the trees and did some pre-training with them and like her, found them incredibly easy to bend into some fairly sharp angles. My inquiries failed to give any reasons for this to happen, but a couple of years later I was speaking to my friend about the junipers and she said they became as hard to bend as any of her other stock after a few years of living in Sydney and that growth was about the same as her other stack as well.
It was our assumtion from all of that, the faster growth I achieved in Darwin had caused longer cell growth, resulting in more bendable wood. Fact or fiction, I do not know. I do not think I have found any difference in the "Bendability" of any Ficus I have grown using the method outlined here.
