AusBonsai

These two field grown Elms where lifted last week. Nothing done to them yet. The thick trunked tree will have all (or most) of the branches removed. To get the trunk taper the branches have grown too thick and are sacrifice branches. Both trees are under 40cm tall. Good trunks to work with.

Great trunks, I love corky bark elms, how old are these and how long have they been field grown?

Hi gerald randall , mate the are very nice trunks to play with . I dont have any corky elms and rarely see good material like these that catch my eye .

Cheers Alpineart

Well, then I better not upload my other stock. I have a lot of these. Just need to convert the sizes of the photos as they are too large to upload.

I have seen many cork bark which have very little cork. The trees on the photos will shrink as we are coming off a rainy season and in the transplant they lie in a bath of Superthrive for anything from a day to three days. The cork is very hydrated. It definitely helps with recovery. But the cork does shrink over the next year. It remains very impressive though.

The trees are in the ground for 6 to 10 years. Clearly with development of the trunk taper is the only objective. I have already removed the branches from the trees, on the photos on my computer. It gives me an idea of what it will look like without some of the branches. What I like to do is to decide where I would like the branches and then place wire on the actual tree. These trees bud a lot when they have no branches. Where the buds appear at the wire, I keep and the rest are removed. Within a year, I have the branches in the right places, or very close to it. The wire is then wrapped around the branches. The branches then have to be developed, thickened and given decent ramification. Once that is achieved, I consider a pot. That could take 3 to 5 years from here.

Now that's a couple of "corkers"
Well done.

Very nice Gerald!

Did you do any root work on them whilst they were in the ground?

You were there Gerald???? So was I and I still don't know who you are! Darn it! Are you the fella I greeted with the very neatly combed black hair?