AusBonsai

Hi all, this is a cork oak I collected in the winter of 2010. I kept as much of the root-ball as I could and soaked it for a week in seasol and water before potting in the only available pot I had at the time. It is in a half, half mix of diatomite and standard potting mix. I trunk chopped it on collection (but not low enough as I was very new to bonsai at that stage), which left it with a bare trunk as there were no lower branches at the time. It grew a lot of branches very quickly in the growing season.
After collection I scraped soil away from the main tap root (trunk extension below ground), and potted it up so that it was exposed, as I liked it as a trunk base. Already after just one growing season that area is showing the beginnings of the lovely cork bark forming. As it develops the bark will thicken up substantially and eradicate any existing reverse taper (although with the trunk line that I am selecting as the new front, it is not even noticable).
As soon as the buds start to swell in early spring I will bare-root it, trim the roots and replant it in a poly box in 100% inorganic mix and feed and water heavily as soon as it recovers.. I would like to put it in the ground to grow on, but I don't have a back yard. At this time I will also prune the multiple branches that are growing from the same spot, and select the basic framework for the primary branches. Then in mid-summer I will trunk chop it a little lower down and grow on the the branch that I chop to as the new leader.
I am not worried about over working this tree as they are ever so tough and grow very quickly.
The top has had a little bit of die-back from the original trunk chop.
Mini ciggy lighter for size reference. I will update with more pics as it develops.
Cheers, Dario. [/attachment]

Hi Dario , nice looking specimen ,it certainly has good characteristics , bark , base , taper and movement . Plenty of options there .I'm keen to see this develop over the next few seasons . Cheers Alpineart

Dario,
There does not appear to be too much wrong with your tree. I would suggest that you leave it in that pot, water well and feed a lot over the coming year, and probably do nothing much else. That will give your tree plenty of vigor for future work.
Cheers Watto

Thanks Alpine, I am also very keen to see it develop too!
I will keep updating its progress as it develops.
Thanks Watto, I was thinking about putting it into a poly box as the current pot that it is in is very deep and I wanted to encourage the roots to spread out a little before they lignify as this species grows so qiuck.
Do you still suggest that I should just leave it be and continue to feed and water well?
Cheers, Dario.

Dario, great to see someone else showing interest in Quercus Suber , i have 2 of them now, i too love the amazing corkbark on these trees. Any chance you have a picture of your tree from the side please?
This is one i picked up a while back, it's got alot more growth now but needs more still so i haven't done anything to it yet, the trunk is about 100mm wide, with deep corkbark. No idea what i'm doing with it
Have you seen this one from Graham Potter?

Hi Craig, thanks for your post mate!
I am very happy to see someone else has this awesome species. I think that access to them is the most likely reason that they aren't as prevalent in OZ? Cheers for the Graham Potter vid...and yes, I have previously viewed and marveled at that suber many times!
The taper from the huge base is incredible! Unfortunately the few that I have don't have a base even remotely like that!...it must take quite a while with certain conditions etc...
Your cork is great Craig!! How did you come across it? I have one similar to yours in terms of trunk shape, but could you please give me the dimensions for height and trunk base? An updated pic would be much appreciated as I would like to see its growth.
My similar one also only has a few branches as I reduced the trunk height again recently , eliminating most of the growth that it had put on after collection.
Yes, I will put up a couple of side pics for you tomorrow or by the weekend at the latest.
Last night I googled Quercus suber bonsai images and saved a few of the pics. At Graham's Kaizen bonsai website you can see some pics of his suber yamadori(fetch a few pounds too!),and starter trees.
He mentions that they don't like repotting very much and that it is best done when the red buds are swelling.
That has been about the only info I have found on them as bonsai? I want to air layer one, and know that Oaks in general can take a while to throw roots. I have seen that you can air layer suber but there wasn't many details/pics etc...such thick bark to cut through!...I wonder if a strip of bark should be left connected when air layering?
I really want to find out as much info as possible regarding Cork oak as bonsai, and that is why I started this thread.
So if anyone else out there has a cork oak feel free to contribute...thanks!
Dario.

Dario, you may be right about not enough access to good suber stock, alot/most of the larger ones you'll see in europe are collected i think.

Dario wrote:Your cork is great Craig!! How did you come across it? I have one similar to yours in terms of trunk shape, but could you please give me the dimensions for height and trunk base? An updated pic would be much appreciated as I would like to see its growth

Thanks mate, local Bonsai nursery, Waaaayyy down the back, hiding in the bushes , there's still quite a few there aswell, the large one i have, i got because it was the biggest one i could see, nothing to do with the long untapered trunk, most of that will go when i style it , , The trunk is about 100mm across and 500mm high where i chopped it to get it home. This is the difference since the original pic(above) on 7th February 2011. The small one i picked for the base and some taper in the trunk, as the roots were buried there is only the beginning of cork down low, .
You can be fairly aggressive with root pruning on a healthy tree aswell, if you cut all the branches back very hard ,it will put new shoots out straight through thr corkbark, , as you say treat like alot of other trees and go by the budswell for repott or go by your own experience, Very hardy in my opinion, but i haven't worked on them very long, so still alot to learn...
The bark on these trees is harvested every 9 years i believe,
http://www.kew.org/plants-fungi/Quercus-suber.htm





*** cork oak, Fagaceae Quercus suber L.

Leaf: Alternate, simple, evergreen, leathery, ovate to elliptical, 2 to 3 inches long, margin either entire or usually with wavy teeth; leaf surface cupped, dark green above, very fuzzy and whitened below.
Flower: Monoecious; males are slender, yellow-green catkins 2 to 3 inches long; females are very small, in clusters of 2 to 4 in leaf axils; both appear in early spring.
Fruit: Acorn, 1 to 1 1/2 inches long, narrow, oblong; loose scaly cap covers approximately 1/2 of the nut; matures in 1 season.
Twig: Moderate, light gray-brown, abundant gray fuzz; buds clustered, reddish brown, with some gray fuzz, broadly triangular and pointed.
Bark: Very unique, light gray with deep reddish brown furrows, developing very thick (inches) layers of cork, ruggedly ridged and furrowed; reddish brown when recently harvested for cork.
Form: A medium sized tree (up to 65 feet tall) typically with a low dividing trunk.*****

Craig, here are a couple more pics...
This is the one that I said is similar to yours. But it is about 35cm in height and around 7cm in width at the base (so it is a little smaller).
Eventually I will chop the smaller left branch off (sorry about the pic, I was in a rush!). The other pic is of the main trunk (branch out of this view), which is how it will look in time. And this is why it is a little similar to your trunk shape? sort of?
The main trunk (of the above pic) was chopped a couple of months back ( it was another 45cm higher, but with no taper).
To learn a bit more about suber I decided to keep the top 20cm and try a cutting.The cutting itself has no taper or much interest (just an experiment). I took some 2cm thick cuttings that were yet to develop the cork bark last winter, and they all rooted no dramas.
So instead of throwing away the top part of the trunk chop, I planted it. As you can see this cutting does have around 1.5cm thick cork bark. After striping the bark off on the bottom cm and adding rooting hormone, I placed it in my unheated greenhouse in standard potting mix and tied a plastic bag around it. I also left a few young branch stubs with a couple of leaves cut by two thirds.
In the last two weeks some buds have popped and started growing. It may just be stored energy from the trunk itself and the cutting may not root...time will tell. To be honest, I am surprised that it popped buds so quickly (if at all)...but they are ever so tough and vigorous! Will let you know if it roots this growing season.
Dario.

Brings a smile to my face whenever i see the cork bark on these trees, Dario have you thought about growing the second one as a twin trunk, hard to tell but looks like a good candidate , either way, i love it .

Dario wrote:I took some 2cm thick cuttings that were yet to develop the cork bark last winter, and they all rooted no dramas.

I haven't tried any yet, but now you've said they go ok i may do some soon, cheers for that good to know
It'll be interesting to see if the large cutting takes, look after it and let me know, i'd be keen to try and take the top off mine as it's so big.Thanks Dario ,

Dario, how did your Suber cuttings go mate? I'm going to try the top of mine so i'm keen to know .
I ended up doing the chop this arvo and i am a little bit happy with it so far ,
Also gave it a repot and removed 3thirds of the roots but no bare rooting ,left some soil intact. Not finished wiring yet and the tree will put out a bucket load of new shoots to play with,the height is now 420mm and trunk is 105mm wide, here's the progress mate,, ,,

Hi Craig, thanks for updating your cork oak. I think you have done a fine job...it looks great and I will learn a lot from watching your tree progress, so thanks and good luck!! Please keep updating it as it develops!
Oh yeah, how is the smaller one going?
The smaller cork cuttings I took are going well and I pruned them last week and they are shooting already...I will post some pics this weekend.
I wish you luck using the trunk chop as a cutting. My one is not going great although it isn't dead yet. I will not give up trying to root the larger corked up cuttings even though the current one is not the best. I have been a little careless with it and knocked it a few times...I didn't wire it into the pot and will make sure that I do so with future attempts.
I will also update my cork in this post...I too decided to further trunk chop mine and did it a few days back. I need to buy some bonsai wire so that I can get mine to a similar stage as your one. However, unlike you, I did not repot mine at the same time. I really want to bare root it and work on the roots some, so I think I will wait till the start of next spring to do so...unless you advise differently.
I collected a few more a couple of months back and learnt a lot in the process. I will try collecting another couple this Autumn and bare rooting them upon collection.
Once I have the results of how that goes, I will have the experience to know the best time and methods for collecting in my climate.
Thanks again Craig! Top work!
Cheers, Dario.

Thanks for that Dario , I'll give the cutting a go and see what happens.

My small Suber is doing well, and i have trimmed it back a week or so ago and new shoots are emerging now, i think it needs a bigger pot but won't worry just yet, i'll take a pic soon and post it for you mate.

I'll leave the time to repot up to you mate but i reckon anytime is fine, be careful when bare rooting oaks as they have the beneficial mycorrhizae on thier roots like pines, try to replace some old soil into the root area when repotting . talk soon Dario

Hi all, I mentioned to Craig that I would post some pics of my smaller cuttings...I am pretty sure I planted them around mid August last year.
I put them straight out into full sun but I had them covered similar to how Pup does his cuttings (in an upside down coke bottle)...so they were fully covered.
I used rooting hormone on them and they had no trouble establishing.
The tallest would be no more than 15cm or so. Here are some pics a year on... I have no idea what the roots look like on these as yet. I will repot them in Autumn around the start of April so I guess I will find out then. I pruned them all a couple of weeks ago to get some lower buds shooting etc. They will need to be pruned again soon as they are apicially dominant and the new growth is already too strong on some as I wish to keep them smallish.
As you can see, they are quite young as the bark is yet to cork up (I believe that starts to happen after around five years). They were just an experiment for a little fun.
Craig in regards to the corked up larger cuttings, I believe that they are possible. Mine is not doing great as I think I did it at the wrong time of year as well as bumping it around etc. Also I did not cover mine up and believe it was a mistake as that is how I got success with these smaller ones.
In regards to bare rooting when collecting, I bare rooted four at the start of spring and they are all ok. The two that are doing the best were collected whilst new shoots/growth was at 5 cm in length, and they didn't skip a beat. The other two were yet to start pushing buds let alone extending them into new shoots, and that was a big mistake. One of them dropped all its leaves and is now only just starting to grow, and the other dropped 2/3rds of its leaves, but has been growing for the last month.
I have searched some Portuguese and Spanish websites were some of them advocate collecting bare rooted in Autumn...so I will try that this Autumn too.
I didn't know about Oaks relationship with mycorrhizae so thanks for the info. This species seems strong enough to handle bare rooting on collection though, and I can certainly say that it makes getting them home so much easier on the back!
Will post some more pics soon.
Cheers, Dario.

Dario, those cutting look good mate, plenty to play with.
They are tough alright ,like you say when they're growing is a good time to repot.

On another note; i just found out there's a corkbark melaleuca, that'd be

Craig wrote: Dario, those cutting look good mate, plenty to play with.
They are tough alright ,like you say when they're growing is a good time to repot.

On another note; i just found out there's a corkbark melaleuca, that'd be

Corky tree's are so cool, the bark can look real weird as it splits and leaves huge fissures around the stems. Googled the corkbark melaleuca, looks like it would make a stunning bonsai


http://esperancewildflowers.blogspot.co ... leuca.html