Celtis Africana #bonsai restyling planned out to the "T".

I have neglected my blog a bit the past week. It's just been one of those weeks where you don't know if you waking up or going to sleep. Everything has just been a blur. Today is Mandela Day and every TV channel and Radio channel is broadcasting a story on this. So I thought that I would be a bit different and write something that takes my mind off this topic.

I have had this #celtis tree for a few months now. I have had time to study it and it is now the right time to do some work on the tree. Like with any other deciduous tree, development can be slow. So I will be starting with this tree today. I will be working on the Primary branches first and later on I will give attention to the roots. The roots of this tree needs more work than the rest of the tree. But it is not the right time to be working on the roots now. I chose to work on the three areas illustrated in the image below for today.
In the image above you can see that the half circle that cuts through the fine twigs resembles the line where I will be trimming the tree. That line is marked A in the image. B on the image marks the the branches on the tree that are in front of each other. These branches are to thick to bend by using wire and will break as they are very brittle during the dormant period of the year as there is no sap flow. I will be using wedges to bend them. I will do this over a period to bring the risk of breaking a branch down. C in the image shows the position where I would like to have my lower branches at. This I will have to build over time as heavy bends to a tree with branches that are this thick is not worth doing.

As you can see the ramification on the tree is quite dense. This looks good but there are a few issues with in the tree that needs to be worked on. I will be cutting back these fine branches to one and two nodes as I want the angles at which the finer branches come out of the primary branches to have more balance and also trim them so that they do not cross.
Currently there are a few branches that cross and some of them are just to long and straight. This will open up the tree and create more space with in the tree.

In this close up you can see a few of the branches invade the space of other branches and that does not look good when the leaves have all fallen off. There is a few branches that have died back that I will be removing as well. There are a lot of stamps left where previous cuts where made that died back as well so I will remove them to.

If you look at the roots of this tree you can see that there is a lot that needs to change. I just want to get this off my chest ... but it looks like the handle bars of a bicycle. If I want to address this I will have to plant the tree in a deeper pot and make cuts and add apply rooting hormone to the cuts and cover it up. Usually I would say work on the roots and trunk first and only then focus on the ramification. In this case the roots and trunk are already developed, there is only need for a few slight changesso I will be working on the ramification for now and when I repot I will work on the roots. It is currently winter in my region so the soil that this tree is planted is is very damp and hold a lot of water. I will be changing this asap. This is a very tricky thing to get right since we planted the trees in soil that retains water for the summer that past. As there was a severe drought during the summer and temperatures where very high. Now in winter trees are damp for days. I skip watering for a few days on this tree and it's still wet. Besides the soil mixture that needs to change during repotting there is the roots themselves that needs work. Here are a few close ups of the unsightly root ends. Looks like they were chopped off with a butchers knife.

The other side...

I would like to shorten the two long roots that comes from the sides of the trunk to half their current length. I will make the cuts at an angle that would face the soil and then bend down the roots into the soil so that it looks more stable. It now looks like all the roots are above the ground.

I will be posting the first phase of the changes mentioned above tomorrow.

Hope you liked the blog. Please feel free to leave you comments below.

#teambonsai
#bonsaicommunity