Took the opportunity on a few days off to style some old black pines I’ve had sitting around for a while. I’ve never really known what to do with these but I figured I’d just dive in and we see what happens. This is a first styling and I used almost everything the trees had on them. Being autumn and wanting them to accumulate as much energy as they can for spring I opted to remove as little foliage as possible. I did remove branches, don’t get me wrong, but I was very picky with what I did take. Anyway, here they are, don’t give me too much grief on my sloppy wiring, I plan on reworking these a bit in the summer so I’ll refine the wiring a bit more when that happens.
Nicely spent time off
From the left to the right I like the second and the 4th the most. All of them have heaps of potential due to interestingly shaped trunks. The first one has too many branches to my eye but I believe it is work in progress or intentional for a reason.
Good work honestly!
Don’t worry about your wiring being perfect, it will take time. Practice, practice, practice and patience.
I say patience because sometimes we get the itch and want to “touch” our trees, but I believe that you might have wired your pines just a little early. Late Autumn and Winter is ideal.
Anybody chime in with your thoughts
My wiring is usually pretty on point. I pay close attention to detail. These however, I definitely got the itch and couldn’t resist touching them any longer. It’s early autumn but has been pretty cold here so I thought even though I might be pushing it they’ll be okay. On top of that, i believe removing needles would be more detrimental to the trees health than wiring. That’s my thinking behind keeping as much as I could. For sure though I was having tunnel vision and couldn’t keep my hands off any longer. My days off are few and far between so I was too excited to do some work on my trees haha. Thanks for the input! I appreciate you taking the time.
This is a little Mugo Pine I styled early last summer… Like the black pines above I’m waiting till spring to repot. I’ve got dozens more I’ll be posting in here. They won’t all be black pines but interesting none the less!
Nice work, my favorites are 1 and 2 but try all have good potential.
When you say black pines, do you mean nigra or thunbergii? If it’s a nigra then Im not sure why this would be a bad time with vascular growth?
I bought these a while back. When I bought them I was told they were thunbergii. However I’m 99% sure they’re Nigra. They were so neglected that tissue had over grown the wire in some places. I had to leave the wire to be fully devoured by the bark. I left them alone for quite some time to gain strength and felt they would be just fine with a bit of wire right now. I think I removed 3 branches total from all four trees and only a couple needle clusters. I know I jumped the gun a bit but I did what I did after much consideration.
Nigra is a single flush European pine and thunbergii is the Japanese coastal pine which makes multiple flushes a year, so you can tell them apart easy
I still don’t think you jumped the gun, they look healthy and fall is a great time to style trees as they are in vascular growth right now.
That’s odd, how is that even possible if genetically, they grow twice a year? Isnt it like bringing a maple indoors and claiming it’s an evergreen?
I’ve never owned a JBP or densiflora but from what I understand they genetically grow twice a year.
I’ve always styled juniper, pines and spruce in Autumn. Maybe not within the first week, but I’ve found Autumn to be a great time to style these species especially. As you said, they’re now in the vascular growth cycle and will recover from these bends very fast. Usually, I might have waited another week or two to style pines specifically, but as I said before, I took many factors into consideration, before diving in and am fully confident these will do just fine. I really appreciate the kind words from everyone and the advice/suggestions. It’s inspired me to share more of my trees so I’ll be posting a couple more in this thread later today.
Hi @ThomasUrban,
Its nothing to do with genetics, its down to summer temperatures and light levels. I have tried decandeling at the beginning of June, and by now the second set of buds are tiny. For us, its safer to just consider them as single flush.
Right on Jesse, I do get the itch and want to touch my trees. I hear you on finding the time in between work and life.
I thank @ryan and the Mirai Team for the wiring videos, my wiring is so much better than before.
Also, I like the tree on the far right
I second @AndyK words. Living in UK I read/heard many times that 2 flush pines need to be treated as single flush in here. Believe I remember Ryan mentioning it somewhere too.
Here another two I styled last spring. As stated earlier, these were all first stylings. They all have a long way to go. I don’t share many of my trees online so I thought these would be good candidates to set of mission to change that.
Well done, you’ll have quite the interesting collection of pines in your future!
I have to ask, where are you getting all these twisty trunked pines?
Thx
I found one nursery, not a bonsai nursery at all, in the China town area of my city who got 10 of these in…I don’t know where they got them but for selling them at $100 Canadian each they definitely didn’t know what they had. Needless to say I bought them all.
Okay, I had no idea. Good to know, thanks for the information.
I’m sure though that if we had some closer photos, we could see if it was a nigra or thunbergii.
