AusBonsai

Hey all,
Picking up the latest in my collection tomorrow and thought I'd get some conversation going on this one. It's a Hinoki Cypress, something I've never worked with before in my whole 12 - 24 months of Bonsai haha.

I want to develop dense foliage pads on this tree, but I've never quite been able to grasp the correct application of technique to achieve this.

As always, assistance is always appreciated.

Lots of bonsai love,
-mo

This tree was on Ebay

Have fun with it

One thing I like about Hinoki's is the fan shaped foliage masses. In this tree's case, depending on what the roots look like these pads as they are give a really nice feeling of a full size natural tree. I wouldn't mess with it too much. I've heard or read somewhere that Hinoki's should have vertical foliage sections removed and just leave the horizontal ones. Not sure how true it is though. Perhaps others can comment?

Nice tree mate!

Removing the vertical or twisted foliage as purely aesthetic, the tree just looks better with all foliage growing in a horizontal plane.

FatMingsBonsai wrote:This tree was on Ebay

Have fun with it

That it was! Looking forward to this one!!

Andrew Legg wrote:One thing I like about Hinoki's is the fan shaped foliage masses. In this tree's case, depending on what the roots look like these pads as they are give a really nice feeling of a full size natural tree. I wouldn't mess with it too much. I've heard or read somewhere that Hinoki's should have vertical foliage sections removed and just leave the horizontal ones. Not sure how true it is though. Perhaps others can comment?

Nice tree mate!

I don't disagree mate, mostly want to just let this grow and thicken a bit, but at the same time need to let there be light so that the inner foliage doesn't die! Don't want leggy branches with foliage at the tips!!

Hackimoto wrote:Removing the vertical or twisted foliage as purely aesthetic, the tree just looks better with all foliage growing in a horizontal plane.

That's a good point! When can I remove the unwanted greens?

I love hinokis!!! Khan lim of BSA has a huge forest oh them-spectacular.
From what I've read they are extremely slow growing though

Hackimoto wrote:Removing the vertical or twisted foliage as purely aesthetic, the tree just looks better with all foliage growing in a horizontal plane.

Yip - aesthetic improvement was what I meant. Each little foliage "fan" then looks like a pad of leaves.

MoGanic wrote:When can I remove the unwanted greens?

I think you can probably remove the verticals at pretty much any time as long as you don't do too many at once. Pup's gonna kill me, but theory would dictate that any major removal be done at root pruning time so that you don't get root rot. Can't say I know for sure though as I don't own a Hinoki. It may be a good opportunity to do energy balancing as you can leave the verticals on where you need extra growth and take 'em off where you want refinement.

I still think it's a cracker tree!

Cheers Andrew, I think that's exactly the approach I will be taking.

From the looks of the tree, it's not in the best shape at the moment. Brown tips and very dense soil, not too happy about that. Will have to visit the nursery and purchase some better soil and take a gander at the root mass while I'm at it.

Still glad I picked this one up though, the foliage fans are great!

Will do some before and afters when I prune and repot.

-Mo

Soooo forgot to take before pics.... refer to above!

This is after first styling - just finished it now... 5:30am. Gotta love the bug haha.


*edit: Noticed some spots it can be pruned a little further just to neaten it up, but I'll let it recover from this one first as I already removed a fair amount of foliage!

Ha! That's bug has bitten hard ...Looking good. How tall is it?

matlea,

MoGanic is most likely sleeping after finishing his tree at 5am lol

FatMingsBonsai wrote:matlea,

MoGanic is most likely sleeping after finishing his tree at 5am lol

Like a log! (see what I did there?)

Roughly the tree is about 380mm from base of soil

Anyone know how this species does inside? I.E how long can I bring it in for at a time without doing too much damage?

MoGanic wrote:Anyone know how this species does inside? I.E how long can I bring it in for at a time without doing too much damage?

I would only have any tree inside for 3 -4 days. then outside for at least a month to recover.

Ken

that sounds reasonable, i d like to display it occasionally indoors for guests during winter