I collected these trees from a lot down the street from my house this spring. They are the closed thing I have to yamadori. As you can see they not the usual honeysuckle. Cats were scratching on these, so I plan to remove the bark. A tree fell on the thick hollow one that is bent over. One is twisted like rope. I have no idea how it got that way and I have never seen a honeysuckle like it. I thought the 3rd had a cool base so I dug that one up too.
I know these trees are quite vigorous but how to cultivate them into good bonsai, I have no idea.
Honeysuckle are basically weeds - extremely robust in terms of staying alive. But my experience is that while they are hard to kill, wiring a branch succeeds only about 60% of the time. The rest of the time the entire branch dies! Sometimes another bud appears near the original branch, and sometimes not. I found honeysuckle easy to air layer, but hard to style. Roots grow very fast. You’ll probably end up with lots of deadwood. Whether a well-shaped canopy can be achieved with this species is unclear to me.
After recently acquiring a number of honeysuckles, l find that l am having the same problems with some of the wired branches dieing and usually the thinner ones (1/16" diameter). The branches over 1/8" seem ok. l plan to be more gentle with future attempts by trying to “guide” the branch rather than trying to bend it too much. l have had similar problems with potentilla.
I collected a large one about 3-4 years ago. Mine is in a grow bed to get some taper and main structure but the internodes are very large so I prune it back often and only bother gently wiring the weaker shaded branches with small internodes that i then give priority by making sure the tips get sun and let them grow out, they grow super fast so its easy to get bite marks so the strongest branches I ignore and le them run knowing they’ll be sacrifices. the amount of backbudding is crazy, problematic even because of the trees tendency to create whorls/knuckles… so I consider it a very high maintenance species seeing as it can be pruned 3 times in a year, needs consistent bud maintenance and seems to be pretty thirsty. I’ve also noted that the wood is hard and takes a long while to rot, my big cuts are still rock hard never even having been treated or covered. full sun has been great but keep in mind this tree is in a grow bed with airy organic compost for soil. I’m in NY btw.
Its a forgiving species that’s great for a lot of pruning practice but I wouldn’t consider it easy to work with by any stretch of the imagination so if any of us can make a beautiful tree with it I’d consider that quite the feat. has anyone had any luck with leaf reduction or shallow pots?
