AusBonsai

Hi all, I just bought an azalea inga... google that to get confused... anyway, I bought it for a test subject, i have a large karume azalea, that I'm ?? frightened of killing, so anything I do, I'll do to the inga first... but in the meanwhile, I'm wondering, can anyone tell me, how many years it would/will take to develop a trunk? to be proud of? (assuming I don't kill it) I'm working on the theory, that I'll view it as a long term project... assuming it lives...

Hi Paddles,
Trunk development is dierctly related to foliage.
A little foliage for lots of years or little number of years with lots of foliage.
Having said that, azaleas grown in the ground with lots of foliage for 20 years are not likely to be very thick. (they take longer than most other species)

Yeah I agree.
they take ages and will get to about 1 inch thick quite quicl and then slow right down.

My best tree is a Azalea that I collected from a garden. It is a section of a clump, and has been grown for 50 + years. The main trunk is only abotu 3 inches thick but has a large Base from where all the other stems grew from
If you put a small shrub in the ground, you may well have an inch or 2 in 5 years. They grow relly long fast, but not much girth due to the very thin bark.

Smaller Shohin or Mame sizes can be grown from not much in a few years only

Ken

You can get a nice young tree with an interesting trunk in 5-7yrs from a cutting if you get lots of movement into it but it won't be thick. As the others said a big trunk takes decades but most inportant is to get it to one trunk from the start and keep it at one so all the growth goes into the single trunk. A garden grown untrained tree might be 50 yrs old but have 10 trunks that are all skinny.