(Allo?)casuarina Equistifolio 'clump'

[Kelv]

Ahoy!

Around 2 years ago I sowed some Casuarina seeds and a good hundred or two came out, quite delightful!
Because the ideal time for repotting (I am not too certain about this) was during the busiest time of year, I did a lot of slip potting in the first year into some trays.

The result was that the casuarinas took the immediate chance to throw its roots straight into the ground and grew like mad.
Regretfully I did not wire them young or did any of that, so they are now nice long straight seedlings, but all clumped up

I was just wondering about what people would do in this situation...
My thoughts were

1) Leave it as it is, it does look quite nice, one nice block of casuarina and let it go nuts
2) Cut it down and make individual mini clumps (could look good to have very small refined casuarina kabudachi)
3) Remove individually and do something... (ideally not)
4) Refine it to become one damn fine looking forest (E.g. casuarina groves on the beach etc)

What say all?

[FlyBri]

Gday Boomy!

Hope the rain did you some good today.

I was just wondering about what people would do in this situation...
My thoughts were

1) Leave it as it is, it does look quite nice, one nice block of casuarina and let it go nuts
2) Cut it down and make individual mini clumps (could look good to have very small refined casuarina kabudachi)
3) Remove individually and do something... (ideally not)
4) Refine it to become one damn fine looking forest (E.g. casuarina groves on the beach etc)

5) Twist all the individual seedlings together to form one massive mega-seedling!!!

What do you think?

Nice work so far, anyway!

Fly.

[Jamie]

i reckon you got it right there fly, and you could also bend out some of the seedlings to form branch work


jamie

[Pup]

Keep it as ONE big Forrest if you can find a slab or pot big enough and you can lift them. This time of year when they are growing is when I re pot.
Not had a failure yet, so if you want to go for smaller clumps, I would try now.

Cheers Pup

[Kelv]

Ahoy!

Thanks for the replies, I'm considering doing a couple things now I guess
What I might do is to start with attempting to make it one nice looking forest... and if there are a few clumps that won't look too superb I shall remove them and grow them out

And I'm actually hoping I can pull out big enough clumps to do what Fly suggested

I forgot to mention that the tallest sapling is probably almost a meter!
How will a Casuarina take major chops + lifting?

The other option is to hack now and lift next year (as the roots are FIRMly in the ground water seeking and all)

[anttal63]

hey boomy, i agree with the forest and clump settings. it would be interesting to see them fused together too. in the past ive chopped them to nothing, bare rooted them and repotted all in one hit. no prob. give m a few weeks and they pop all round the chops. good luck mate. off to the bsv agm tonight, see you there if ya goin.

[Kunzea]

Hi boomy
Great clump of casuarinas you have there. I too would love to see them left as a forest. If you can work with the size/weight of the larger clump, then go for it. It could be impressive. Try rubbing off all the multitudinous branches that will form and grow 'inwards', towards other trunks. These won't do much and will distract from the overall setting. Think about how you want the outer branches to be. The innermost trees surrounded by others will probably only have a few branches at the top, while those on the outside should be developed with some lower ones, but in a way that allows views into the interior. You don't have to see everything from one viewing point - some surprises for those who move around to see the whole is always a welcome feature of a complex setting and that is what a forest is. If you study the detail of where each trunk is now, you might find that you could judiciously cut out a few here and there to create a little more room for the remaining ones without ruining the overall forest look. Even in forest groups, the 'less is more' can be most effective.

Are you sure that it is Casuarina equisetifolia? It could be, but the bark also looks like C. cunninghamiana, the river she oak. Can you count the number of 'leaves' (teeth) at the nodes of the side branches?
Must go, but do keep us up to date with where you take this fortuitous planting of great interest.
Cheers
Kunzea

[Brandon]

I'm with Flybri, an uber tree of massive proportions!