How to make your bonsai's trunk look older.

[craigw60]

Hi Mat,
I used the stabbing technique on a cedar probably 15 years ago it did work but took a very long time to produce the cracked bark I was after and I wonder if I had left the tree alone it may have produced the same result with no intervention.
Craig

[Bretts]

I tend to agree Craig this technique is probably not much more than a neat party trick. But they can be fun. Like I said I was hoping to use this in the literati comp to age the bark of my Pine in the one year. Bonsai can be just plain fun as well

[craigw60]

Hi Brett.
Like I said it took a long time to heal and crack. Maybe if you stabbed the pine then grew the hell out of it you would get a faster result. One year seems to be a bit of a stretch but no harm in trying. All aspects of bonsai are fun even the waiting isn't that why we do it ?
Craig

[Bretts]

If waiting was the funnest part we would be looking for the slowest way to get to the same end

[anttal63]

Ant, maybe when ya got 600 year old trees ya dont need to add aging.....lol

Ya reckon the other hunderds of thousands they are growing from seed are better off to stay young?

[Ash]

Sorry guys but I have to point out that there there is a serious problem with the first description of this technique.
Cambium are the meristematic tissues that produce other tissue types in a stem. Xylem and phloem are produced by vascular cambium. Bark (Phellem) and an insulating layer under the bark (Phelloderm) are produced a separate layer called bark cambium . The order from inside to outside of the trunk is 1. xylem, 2. vascular cambium, 3. phloem, 4. phelloderm, 5. bark cambium, and 6. bark. If you abraid your tree back past the bark cambium and phelloderm right through the phloem you will a) remove the bark producing tissues altogether and b) probably kill your tree because you will starve non-leaf tissues of photosynthates which are moved through phloem.

If you moderately damage the bark and damage the bark cambium but dont remove phloem it may regenerate iregularly producing an aged appearence. A localised slit or puncture to the bark cambium will result in a callus of corky cells being produced while the puncture heals. This will produce a rough bark. Wrapping the trunk in something moist will reduce bark exfoliation and the barkmay appear older after a time. Also wrapping the bark will alter the temperature etc. which may alter the rate of activity of bark cambium.

cheers
Ash

[bonscythe]

Hi all,
These methods seem a little crazy to me, kinda like purposely infecting your plant with Agrobacterium to create a crown-gall tumour and then carve it to shape..
Also about the Japanese, ever since joining this forum I have been led to believe they have endless stock trees growing in the ground, if this is the case then I agree with the previous post asking why they would use such techniques in the first place, they have trees which are already aged/matured to choose from/work with...why would they risk the tree's health to gain something they already (apparently) have?

[anttal63]

Hi all,
These methods seem a little crazy to me, kinda like purposely infecting your plant with Agrobacterium to create a crown-gall tumour and then carve it to shape..
Also about the Japanese, ever since joining this forum I have been led to believe they have endless stock trees growing in the ground, if this is the case then I agree with the previous post asking why they would use such techniques in the first place, they have trees which are already aged/matured to choose from/work with...why would they risk the tree's health to gain something they already (apparently) have?

They wouldn't do it full stop unless there was merrit in it and no harm to the tree. That is the point i was making. This has nothing to do with how many aged trees they have. As stated they also grow hundreds of thousands of trees for the commercial market. If this truly is a technique that improves trees the Japanese would have been all over it long ago. I haven't seen any solid evidence of that to this point.

[Asus101]

A good way to get aged bark happenng on a trunk quicker is to cover the trunk with something like black plastic or foil etc. You wrap the section of trunk or the whole trunk if desired so that light dosnt penetrate the bark and this causes the bark to thicken and create an aged look. If you have a pine that has maturing bark on it and place it next to a wall for a year Or so you would notice that the side thy was against The wall would have got more fissured and aged looking bark then the side that was in the sun. This is a technique I learnt over the last few years from a guy i know.

Hugh

Kimura does the same thing, just using natural shade instead.

[Pup]

Again we have conjecture on the merit and demerit of an idea, for creating age in our tree's. In Bonsai Seki, an English edition for good Bonsai fanciers.

There was a series of articles written by Yoshia Kano. called Botany for Bonsai Cultivation.

He outlines the growth process of tree,s what is needed for there health and well being. Then outlines how long it takes in Nature for these things to happen.

Then gives you methods to achieve the end results quicker.

Now I have read the argument that time is what Bonsai is all about, and if it was worth it they would do it. Well reading these articles it is quite per'se, this ageing of the bark. Has been used for years, meaning that it is common place why pass it on, you should know, like wiring.

When you consider that the roots systems take so long to appear in nature.
Like the JBP 100 years before the roots show on the surface, Zelkova serrata 50 years,Ginko biloba 70 years Celtis sinesis 40 years. So when you consider the methods used in Japan for centuries to create Bonsai. Yet we do all we can to make them appear as quick as possible. That make the time waiting argument seem irrelevant, does it not.
There has to be a very large pool of Knowledge being used. Not all of it common place, you just have to delve for it. It is not all on computers some is in Books and Magazines. I do feel this is an ironic argument. When you consider this medium is for speed. Yet Bonsai is one of the most time consuming past times there are.
Like new styles and such, just re hashed.


This article was published in the summer edition of the magazine 1981 vol 1= no 3, pages 35= 37.

Cheers for what it is worth Pup

[Steven]

Here is a pic of 3 little Casuarina that I plaited together and wrapping in silicon tape for about 4 month. The bark has definitely become more fissured since it was wrapped. You can see towards the top of the picture how young the bark looks where it was exposed. This is how the entire trunks of the other whips of the same age look.

March 2010 fused 2.jpg

Regards,
Steven

[MelaQuin]

I have a throwaway casuarina cunnnunghamii that needs trunk help. The base is a bulb and the length between base and branching is a tube. Why bother you say? because the upper structure is wonderful. I'll use my Stanley to score the trunk vertically to cause callousing which will thicken and, hopefully, start to distort the tube to a taper. Currently I am leaving any shoots on the tube to increase its diameter and shape so scarring could also help. This cas grows like a thing demented so I think it will cope with the cosmetic surgery. Was considering putting it in the garden but don't want the top to over develop... just the base. Easier to manage in a pot.

[Pup]

Another magazine from 1981 by our member Bill Valavanis. In it he has an article written by Eiji Shimizu. On propagation of Shimpaku junipers.

He tells us that Eiji Shimizu has been propagating them for over 20 years by cuttings and Air layers. Because they are either off limits or depleted. So that makes it 49+ years now.
Also in the article he tells us that as the bark begins to flake from woody areas, remove it to allow the wood to receive more Sun. to thicken the trunk.

Again a technique from at least 49 years ago.

Summer/1981

Again just some information from a magazine. Cheers Pup

[Jamie]

i think personally i would prefer to let the bark mature by itself, i have tried different means and techniques of getting trunks to artificially thicken, age etc. and the times i used it the trees would always come out unnatural, i think we have got to consider one thing that bonsai should teach us all is patience, i am all for getting things to go a little faster but i have come to understand a tree can only get to a stage as quick as it will grow, the same goes for the maturing of the tree, the bark etc. there are some things we can do to speed this up a bit but not much, heavy feeding helps in growth rates etc. but its not going to do much in a pot right.

take the cork bark JBP for example, they work on these trees on alternate years, one year for the wiring, needles and candling, the next year for allowing the bark to mature and so on. there are reason for this, if they tried these techniques like sandpaper on the trunk and moss then the tree would end up possibly unnatural. if left to grow and mature for 10 years it will be at a lovely stage, putting that in terms of reality we are fine in spending ten years developing a tree in the ground or a grow box why not in developing the bark?

JMO.

jamie

[Orion]

I don't think it would look natural to all the trees but I'm pretty sure it would on most of them(those of you who are wooried about the branch looking young-you can do the same technique on the branch) I did not say take out the whole bark up to the pholoem just scratch some parts ....