AusBonsai

Progression thread : Banksia integrifolia 2

I Purchased this Banksia from Bonsai World at Jilliby on the Central Coast on the 18th May 2016.
Cost $75

This simply took my eye because of the potential. It was a bit raggedy, but I saw great potential in it. I am very inexperienced with Banksia so I was looking forward to keeping up the challenges with more of them. The base is a good start, but after that it just went zig zagging and looked silly.

Grant Bowie's fantastic thread on Banksia was instrumental in learning about how best to start this off. I read and followed every instruction in his thread, including leaving stubs from a heavy cut to allow for die-back. Not to over fertilize until removing the proteoid roots. Leaving a full head of hair over winter. It has been a joy to start this tree off. It is amazing how heavy you can prune these, right back to the first node on a branch and they don't miss a beat.



This photo was taken 18.05.2016



This photo was taken 17.03.2017

I'm finding the same things with banksias. Ideal plants for fast grow techniques because you can let them grow big and tall then cut back hard and expect shoots from all over the bare wood. You are picking some graet trunks Rory. Now need to move on to promoting branching and ramification.
I can see some great trees coming out of these ones you've posted tonight.

shibui wrote:I'm finding the same things with banksias. Ideal plants for fast grow techniques because you can let them grow big and tall then cut back hard and expect shoots from all over the bare wood. You are picking some graet trunks Rory. Now need to move on to promoting branching and ramification.
I can see some great trees coming out of these ones you've posted tonight.

Exactly, this is just what I do too. And the scar heals over relatively quickly. Thank you, I am now refining my collection down to a more manageable number.

Yes, I find I prefer to develop the branches a bit slower than other growers. I might be stupid and taking the long road, and have no idea what I'm doing, but I've got this far from my own experiments and trials. I mainly learnt all the horticultural basics from the legends on here like you, grant, mike, Steven etc. however with styling I think I'm on my own there. I'm still learning a lot and always keen to learn from experts and put my spin on it.

I made some horrible rookie mistakes early on with my casuarinas and gums and developed the lower branches too soon which ended up looking unnatural. So I haven't perfected a particular method, but more so I just cut back the branches that thicken too quickly while keeping the mid section of the tree in check, while only allowing 1 or sometimes 2 leaders to develop... but this greatly depends on the type of natural look I'm after. I don't have a lot of experience with working trees that are the ideal taper and height yet (except the shohin ones I'm trying my hand at), so again I'll have to read a lot more threads about mistakes and things others have done ....when I'm there. I've had to learn a lot to try and develop the shohin trees, as it's not my normal comfort zone. But I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

I started growing a lot of banksia serrata too, but I'm down to only 1 now. Integrifolia are fantastic material for bonsai and def. the best that I've tried of all the banksia.

One interesting observation I've come to is.... I don't see the need for defoliation in my 3 main native material. You get too many problems with gums doing this. There is no point doing this to a casuarina. And I find it really stuffs up a banksias' health by doing this.

Hi Rory,

A lot of good observations there!

No need to defoliate as it doesn't really help, lots of foliage through winter, fertilising, etc.

I am soon to update my Banksia article with photos on some trunk hollowing experiences; but I can report that you can easily create hollows in the trunk at any level even right down to the base with safety (whether intentional or not).(Banksia integrifolia).

Grant

Thanks for the input Rory. I also battle with native branch structure - standard pine-or-deciduous thinking just does't cut it, but I'm not sure what the next phase will turn out to be.

We tend to default to tidy trimmed flat leaf-pads as the standard fall-back position, but I don't think these work well either. There are three-dimensional star-like reticulations on penjing elms that might be a good starting point.

Rising sub-trunks reticulating into smaller and smaller branches seems to be a theme in Eucalypts in the wild, but I haven't seen it done much in bonsai. Certainly not in mine.

Some large Mels tend to have large roundish overlapping foliage masses in a dense over-all canopy, showing branch structure just peeping through the gaps.

A lot of Leptos and fine-leafed Mels end up with bare trunks, reticulating upwards through finer and finer bare branches to a cloud of foliage right at the top. I'm not sure I want to grow bonsai that look like this, but I might be narrow-minded. A lot of rain-forest trees are dead straight with a fringe of foliage up top - same conclusion. Are we making a reflection of nature or a something interesting to look at?

Banksias I've seen in the wild (Royal National Park south of Sydney, and and in the sand hills north-east from Perth) tend to have a wandering/climbing trunk (not the thick elephant's feet trunks we see on some serrata bonsai) surrounded by star-like reticulation clusters, very open and see-through.

Very old river Casuarinas, when everything else around them has died or fallen over, can have a straight trunk surrounded by a chaos of cumulus-clouds of foliage, with branch structure mostly obscured, but going up, down and sideways - rarely a flat branch or a branch with a consistent direction, but some wobbles wired in.

Native branching is a tough subject, and I'm only really just getting started.

Gavin

Hi Rory,

Nice stock. You are building a great collection of quality stock by the looks of it.

I love the trunk line on this. I believe the integrifolias are far greater than the serratas even though I love the fat bases the serratas get. The integrifolias get a more interesting shape about them

Look forwards to the progression.

Squizzy

Hi Rory,
You've got a really nice base and a trunk line with plenty of interest. It's looking good.
Brett


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Just an update on this Banksia. My gosh Banksia is quickly becoming one of my favourites. I see why Grant loves them so much.

Just an update on this Banksia integrifolia.
I would say this is possibly one of the best species of natives for bonsai.

This photo was taken 28.02.2019