Feminine yamadori spruce

Hi, Just wanted to get your thoughts on this feminine yamadori spruce I recently wired. Very sparse right now and so it’ll receive extra winter care. image
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I think it’s beautiful. I’d remove the second apex on the right hand side. The small apex in the centre will gain strength quite fast and fill out. I’ve got many semi-formal, slanting and similar styled spruce and every one of them started out just like this. I think you’re off to a great start and in time this will be a really nice tree!

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Be carefully removing this much foliage, usually spruce don’t appreciate that very much.
I agree about removing the second apex, though since you removed so much already I’d leave it for the time being.

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Why the two apexes? Were you trying to tell a story about the environment or the history? The future will be determined by how healthy you keep it and the container you choose. Did you shape the trunk with the wire or am I seeing an illusion with the twists of the heavy wire? The bark is fragile, so take great care to keep it natural. :evergreen_tree:

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Interesting :thinking: I firstly stared at the top ‘before’ picture and imagined something exactly what you did with it according to what you named the topic. Then I scrolled down and saw what I had in my mind
I do like the lightness of the tree so perhaps gave it more of a movement by trying to play with right hand side branches they seem to be leaders of this move and also move the trunk to the right too?? From the centre down of the trunk it is nicely shaped by nature - wouldn’t do anything to it.
Secondly the pot (if you are planning to use the one on the picture) I find to heavy or rather sturdy for the tree. Did you try something more delicate?
Otherwise really liking the work you did on it :+1:t4:

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Hi @swissbonsai,
Spruce are fairly tough. Not sure how cold it gets where you are, but I would leave it out to go through winter dormancy. It’s almost as easy to kill trees with kindness as it is to kill them with neglect.

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Yes, the two apices are to represent an Alpine environment, also you can’t really see it in the photo, there is another one underneath the two top ones. I would like to think that something happened and now there are several places filled with auxin and fighting to be the top dog.
The container. It’s a plastic one in which I placed the tree after collection and this year I had to add additional barriers just to keep the substrate from washing out :smile:
Maybe this spring it’ll have it’s first re-pot and I am thinking maybe a simple and subtle oval pot will do. And yes, you have good eyesight, it is wire and unfortunately the thickest I could get; 6mm. I just wanted to get a little bit more movement out of the middle and top as it was pretty straight compared to the base. I’ll try my best and thanks for the feedback!

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Yeah I took a lot of foliage off, I know it’s not ideal, but the roots are packed and there are back buds all over the older branches here so I hope next year the energy will be pushed there, according to the elongating species theory.
The top double apex just came to me as an idea of an Alpine tree and so I decided to just run with it.

:slight_smile: That’s awesome that you had a similar vision as I did! Yes more direction will be needed towards the right and the left is too long right now but I think I already risked quite a lot by removing so much foliage. I like the base movement as well but the middle to the top was quite straight and so I tried my best with the thickest wire available (Al 6mm, no Cu unfortunately) and was able to only slightly apply some subtle movement into it as it’s already quite stiff.
The pot is a plastic one in which I placed the tree after collecting so just health and establishment was considered. I think a subtle and simple oval one would look nice. What do you see working with it?

I can’t really find an example right now but something like this, except the rim would need to be softer and the pot doesn’t need to have that hump from top to bottom.
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Good luck with the tree. I don’t know much about spruce but basics neither have any atm but hope it will show no signs of ‘too much removed’ so you’ll have some more work on your plate in next season :slight_smile:
The oval pot I like a lot and can see how it would work esp color contrast when your spruce is back to it’s greenery. Also the hump is a nice little addition to such tree - I see it as an highlight for the fact it is not feminine deciduous tree. I would definitely won’t go for anything plain neither lighter in color (like for mapples for eg.) Anyway when the time for repot will come you will have clearer picture of what works for the tree. So far I agree with this choice.
Maaaaaan, I think we share same vision :wink:

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I dig it! I think my only comment would be that I’d like to see a little more motion at the bottom and center of the trunk, either from the trunk itself or from a branch or two.

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