Lophostemon confertus Queensland box, Brisbane Box,

[morrie]

Hi
this is my first post.. i'm a naive Brisbane bonsai person but have had a few years mucking about with it.. got early stage figs, bougainvillaea, willow, crepe myrtle and chinese elm and a few bits and bobs of other stuff... this forum's been a great help

anyway
i got this tree from a seedling in my garden under a neighbour's tree ... i let it grow not really knowing what it was - when i realised what it was i refted it out and stuck in a pot so no one weeding the garden killed it...
it lived .. i keyed it out roughly and am pretty confident of my ID as "Lophostemon confertus (syn. Tristania conferta), Common names include brush box, Queensland box, Brisbane Box, pink box, box scrub, and vinegartree"

question is ..am i wasting my time with this species .. searching the net i found one photo of one.. what my chances of getting anything bonsai -ish out of it
the soil is mostly sand so if i am going to persist i better re-pot it i suppose? i was thinking of lifting it & adding some better soil without disturbing any roots or covering the lignotuber and giving it another year?
whats ya tink?

[Jarad]

I really like the colour of the trunk on this!

I'm going to go ahead and say pick your trunk and trim the long branches and shoots. Also chuck it in some dirt and throw it in a colander. There has been a lot of discussion on planting mediums here:
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=19703

I'm not a pro but one day I hope to master the art of not killing small trees

[EdwardH]

I can't give you much advice on this as yet as I bought tube stock in spring last year. So far I have learnt that it seems to cope with dry spell quite well and grows very quickly (almost one metre tall). I hacked at the roots as they were pretty pot bound (as most tube stock seems to be) and the tree grew like nothing had been done to it. Also the bark peels in its first year which I thought was rather unusual but it does look good.

[morrie]

thanks for you input...
it does seem rather tough - i just pulled it out of the ground and stuck in a pot (it was probably a year old by then?) when it looked like it was growing i chopped the trunk where there was two branches -one died back and the other grew like crazy... it seems to dry out and wilts quickly but bounces back

[GavinG]

It's survived, so see what you can do with it. Grow it long, cut it back hard once a year to get some thickness in the trunk, and while you are doing that you can start to understand the way the tree grows. The leaves look a bit large, so you would be aiming for a large bonsai at best. When you choose another native to experiment on, look for small leaves, interesting bark and tough as bags.

Good luck.

Gavin

[EdwardH]

The leaves are large but so are many species. Next summer I'm going to defoliate just to see how much the leaves reduce in size. I hope that they shall reduce and with good technique I should be able to get them to be around 1-2 cm in length, at least that's the plan. If they do not reduce then the tree will either be a large bonsai or mulch.

[morrie]

thanks for the comments
sounds like a plan

[Gerard]

native symposium 2015 46 lophostemon confertus (Queensland box or brush box).jpg

Yes they can be done, I photographed this one yesterday at the Native Symposium

[morrie]

like the look of that one - very encouraging