Saturday, June 27, 2009

spruce # 52

This is a European spruce, Picea abies. It was collected about twenty years ago. Someone did very little and crude work on the stubs and it was planted into a decent bonsai pot. Otherwise it just set around for all the time. I inherited this in a trade because no one wanted it. So, is this good material? Why wold one bother to collect such a thing? The white flag shows that this one is for sale or trade. Well, what can we do with this? There is no visible nebari, All branches are way to high and they are very sparse. This will take ages to become a good looking dense crown if ever. The trunk taper is very fine though, but it has a bow shape. The bark looks old and has character.

Recently Dave asked how we would ever get a decent crown with all these collected spruce when the branches are up so high and all the growth is at the end. Will there ever be growth close to the trunk, how does one get it, how long does it take. If this is all the growth that one can get in twenty years, then this seems a lost case. It still looks like it was collected last year. No wonder nobody wanted this tree.