Learning the trees on my land (anything useful?)

[Lcogginz]

So, all the learning on bonsai has me finally learning what the trees are on our land--we're on about 3 acres with an acre or so cleared. So far I've identified:

- White ash (my husband tried to convince me for years we had pecan trees but we never saw a single pecan so I had my doubts )
- Eastern redbud
- Wild black cherry
- Hackberry (celtis occidentalis)
- Autumn olive (cannot express how much I HATE THIS PLANT)
- Willow oak
- Water Oak
- Sweetgum

As best I can tell, none of these are highly interesting from a Bonsi standpoint. I'm curious about the hackberry and the redbud since it sounds like they tolerate collection well, but mostly doubtful I have any winners. Any thoughts from the experienced folks here?

 

[Hartinez]

Water Oak

I've wanted an oak for a while now. I've tried digging a few from around here but none have survived and the species are no good for bonsai anyway. This water oak became available from Zach at a pretty nice price and I decided to go ahead and get it. He was styling it as a broom but I thought...

www.bonsainut.com

 

[Lcogginz]

Water Oak

I've wanted an oak for a while now. I've tried digging a few from around here but none have survived and the species are no good for bonsai anyway. This water oak became available from Zach at a pretty nice price and I decided to go ahead and get it. He was styling it as a broom but I thought...

www.bonsainut.com

Innnnteresting! I'd sort of discounted the oak, tbh, and was more curious about the sweetgum. Gonna have to tramp around and see if I have any of the oaks that aren't just tiny.

 

[Hartinez]

Innnnteresting! I'd sort of discounted the oak, tbh, and was more curious about the sweetgum. Gonna have to tramp around and see if I have any of the oaks that aren't just tiny.

I think the big take away from his water oak is how much his new leader thickened from 2016 to 2022. When looking for a tree, look for one with a great base, thick trunk and maybe some low branching to cut back to.

 

[Piedmont Bonsai]

Hackberry is a good native from what I’ve been told

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Sweetgum is a little challenging because (unlike a maple which it looks similiar to) it has alternating leaves instead of opposing leaves. It is difficult to develop ramification because it is difficult to prune back to two buds to get two new lateral shoots. It tends to get leggy and develop long internodes.

Poke around your property for some red maples or black gum trees.

 

[Lcogginz]

Hackberry is a good native from what I’ve been told

Have seen a little that suggests the same. So far I've only found one with a mature trunk (a few inches in diameter), and wouldn't you know it's in a little overgrown spot in the yard that I've wanted to dig up for years and just let grass grow there. The universe gave me a great excuse, putting the hackberry RIGHT there.

 

[Cmd5235]

Hackberry- yes, love them. Pretty easy to collect, bud back well, ramify well.

Sweetgum- like @Bonsai Nut said, a little harder. Not terribly hard to collect and the fall color can be wonderful, but I’ve been fighting a few for several years. I’d suggest that you go big if you collect. Like big big. The bigger they are, the better the bark will develop, and the scale will be more proportionate for the alternate leaves and foliage size.

Speaking of big, I collected an eastern redbud a few years ago and have had it in a 5-gallon pot ever since to see how it takes container life. It’s been doing fine, I’m going to subject it to some harsh treatments this year, but it’s about 6 feet in height currently. I’m not sure how well the leaves will reduce, and from what I’ve seen they do not like root work. There’s a reason you don’t see many eastern redbud bonsai out there.

 

[Lcogginz]

Hackberry- yes, love them. Pretty easy to collect, bud back well, ramify well.

Sweetgum- like @Bonsai Nut said, a little harder. Not terribly hard to collect and the fall color can be wonderful, but I’ve been fighting a few for several years. I’d suggest that you go big if you collect. Like big big. The bigger they are, the better the bark will develop, and the scale will be more proportionate for the alternate leaves and foliage size.

Speaking of big, I collected an eastern redbud a few years ago and have had it in a 5-gallon pot ever since to see how it takes container life. It’s been doing fine, I’m going to subject it to some harsh treatments this year, but it’s about 6 feet in height currently. I’m not sure how well the leaves will reduce, and from what I’ve seen they do not like root work. There’s a reason you don’t see many eastern redbud bonsai out there.

Helpful - thanks! Am most curious about the hackberry, so this is good news.

I mostly laughed at finding out we had redbud--it's an in-joke here and a reference to the stupid 80's movie Funny Farm, and the old geezer who, when asked for directions to the next town, said something like "I reckon you can guess your way to Redbud."

I may pass on the sweetgum for the time being; I'm new and don't really want to fight anything for the foreseeable future besides my lack of knowledge!

 

[19Mateo83]

Do you have and creeks on your property?

 

[19Mateo83]

Look for American hornbeams near the creeks. They are fairly easy to spot because of how they grow “muscles, or sinew” looking bark. They are a great species to use for bonsai.

Here’s a very informative video on collecting American hornbeam

 

[Goodbrake]

The redbud and cherry might display nice flowers in the spring. Even if the foliage isn't great, they may still be worth growing.

 

[pandacular]

As best I can tell, none of these are highly interesting from a Bonsi standpoint.

RIP Ben Oki American Bonsai Pioneer | Bonsai Bark

See the photo in this memorial for a hackberry that is so interesting that it proves otherwise. This tree was collected near the wall of Ben Oki’s home.

As for the others, I’ve heard of practitioners in the northwest using western redbud, but don’t know about eastern.

 

[rockm]

the hackberry is your best bet for bonsai material. They make excellent resilient bonsai and are relatively easy to collect.

Sweetgum is hard to collect if you haven't collected anything before. Once they begin budding out, they resent having roots messed with. They also need to be collected on the larger side (like , because of the aforementioned gangly growth habit and alternating leaves.

Redbud is iffy as bonsai. Can be touchy about root work as well.

I had a collected native black cherry bonsai (Prunus serotina) for years. It was a weird tree. It rooted well, was tough in a bonsai container, could take hard pruning. However, it is a "pioneer" species that grows rapidly to colonize areas that don't have other trees to compete with. As such, it is volatile as bonsai. It can drop developed branches for no apparent reason, ditching years of work. Hard pruning or even light pruning on branches at the wrong time can result in the tree abandoning the entire branch in favor of new growth--usually from the root crown via suckers. It's also a bug magnet, particularly tent caterpillars that showed every spring and try to defoliate the tree. Tent caterpillars do that in the wild to mature black cherry. Borers are also a problem, if the trunk is substantial (and if you don't have a decent large trunk to work with it's really not worth the effort to collect them).

Willow oak make excellent bonsai. They're shallow rooted and can be dug pretty easily (in the correct season, early spring before bud break). No oak is worth collecting if it doesn't have a decent largish trunk. Saplings can be used but only if they're collected and allowed to thicken for five years or more in a container. I have a friend who is developing a very large willow oak. It's taken him 8 or 9 years with timed trunk chops during that time. Good oak bonsai take time, sometimes a lot of time.

mostly skip the ash. They may even be a protected species in your area. They are under extreme stress in the Eastern U.S. because of emerald ash borers.

 

[Wood]

The National Bonsai Museum has a rather old and developed sweetgum. It's at least three feet tall, and excellent fall color. Given the age of the tree, it has relatively little ramification. The tree usually gets frequent partial defoliation throughout the summer, to help keep the leaves as small as possible. Originally collected and donated by Vaughn Banting

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5b3a44a7e17ba3cdbff49f51/1532299235280-EXDB9390GPFXML3FUNLG/273+201011+Sweetgum.jpg

 

[Lcogginz]

Do you have and creeks on your property?

No, we're near one I think but we're uphill from it so no flowing water for us.

 

[Lcogginz]

the hackberry is your best bet for bonsai material. They make excellent resilient bonsai and are relatively easy to collect.

Sweetgum is hard to collect if you haven't collected anything before. Once they begin budding out, they resent having roots messed with. They also need to be collected on the larger side (like , because of the aforementioned gangly growth habit and alternating leaves.

Redbud is iffy as bonsai. Can be touchy about root work as well.

I had a collected native black cherry bonsai (Prunus serotina) for years. It was a weird tree. It rooted well, was tough in a bonsai container, could take hard pruning. However, it is a "pioneer" species that grows rapidly to colonize areas that don't have other trees to compete with. As such, it is volatile as bonsai. It can drop developed branches for no apparent reason, ditching years of work. Hard pruning or even light pruning on branches at the wrong time can result in the tree abandoning the entire branch in favor of new growth--usually from the root crown via suckers. It's also a bug magnet, particularly tent caterpillars that showed every spring and try to defoliate the tree. Tent caterpillars do that in the wild to mature black cherry. Borers are also a problem, if the trunk is substantial (and if you don't have a decent large trunk to work with it's really not worth the effort to collect them).

Willow oak make excellent bonsai. They're shallow rooted and can be dug pretty easily (in the correct season, early spring before bud break). No oak is worth collecting if it doesn't have a decent largish trunk. Saplings can be used but only if they're collected and allowed to thicken for five years or more in a container. I have a friend who is developing a very large willow oak. It's taken him 8 or 9 years with timed trunk chops during that time. Good oak bonsai take time, sometimes a lot of time.

mostly skip the ash. They may even be a protected species in your area. They are under extreme stress in the Eastern U.S. because of emerald ash borers.

Yeah, definitely have my eye on the hackberry. Need to explore in the wooded 2 acres and haven't done that yet, but reading up on the cherry put me off messing with it, and as a novice I don't need anything that's too finicky. The time investment with the willow oak doesn't put me off, but I don't have much for them besides saplings growing right around the yard; need to explore more on that one.

I might mess with the redbud just because we have a LOT of little ones growing here and there, thanks to the birds (who also love spreading around the poison ivy, sadly).

 

[rockm]

No, we're near one I think but we're uphill from it so no flowing water for us.

Carolina hornbeam grows in wettish bottomland near creeks and rivers. They make excellent bonsai and are pretty easy to collect, even large examples. Look near the creek for them

 

[Gabler]

Carolina hornbeam grows in wettish bottomland near creeks and rivers. They make excellent bonsai and are pretty easy to collect, even large examples. Look near the creek for them

I've found I can pretty much chop off all the roots and they'll be fine (although that's not necessarily a suggestion). They can handle very wet soil and frequent flooding at least as well as Acer rubrum, although not standing water like Taxodium distichum.

The biggest obstacle to collecting large specimens isn't survival rate. It's growth rate. It takes a long time to grow a thick enough leader to create a smooth transition at the chop site if you start with a big tree. I'm not a fan of artificially-carved deadwood, so I stay away from anything bigger than a soup can in girth.

 

[sevan]

I've only been at this a few years, but water oak seem ok. Below are some air layers I've taken (mostly to learn). I definitely like hackberry, I just started a forest with some 1 and 2 year trees that I grew from seeds I collected in my yard (also learning, lots of room for improvement here).

Other things to watch for while you're exploring might include red maple (acer rubrum), American elm, slippery elm, yaupon holly, blueberry, hornbeam, and hophornbeam. I've seen some interesting muscadine bonsai, but finding one compact enough to collect seems challenging. You probably also have some great plants for kusamono, if you can find a workshop nearby with Young Choe, that can be really fun. Beyond that you might also find invasive plants worth removing like privet and wisteria.