Oh dear

[MattA]

I dug this Murraya a couple of years ago & once it had recovered planted it in the ground to be forgotten. Last spring I found it under the weeds & decided to get it into a pot to see if I could get some growth. It shot away & even flowered but there has been no new growth since december. I hoped for more but know this species can sit for up to a year after the initial burst.

hunk.jpg

Today I decided to have a look at the lifeline & start thinking about what to do with all that deadwood... There was alot of dryrot in the dead roots & they snapped out very easy as I went on the hunt, this is what I found.

ohdear2.jpg

Instead of a good solid line I find rootlets and dead wood all round, there is a live portion coming up from the pot but the 2 are divided by a small gap.

ohdear.jpg

At this stage I see 2 possible courses ahead..
The first is to cut off the lower wood & treat it like a giant cutting, it already has some rootlets so I don't see any issue with it taking and it would be an instant fix to the taper issue that now presents.
The second is to encourage the upper & lower lifelines to bridge the gap then carve alot of the upper wood out to balance the loss of all those twisted roots.

There is a third possibility, into the compost... it can have a couple days on the bench to think about what it wants to do.

If anyone has any other ideas I am keen to hear...

[Neli]

I like the middle picture...it has movement. I always find a human in trees. It looks to me like a woman, lying down on the beach face down , that was asked what is the time and turned around to look at the person asking... I know it is funny, but that is how I operate.
I think You can work with that....and I have seen many famous pros put a stone in the gut to hide it...Just an idea. I am a newbie.
You can do some very creative curving on it.
What and how do you preserve wood so that this does not happen?