Liquidambar orientalis - SweetGum

Man am I tired of cleaning up someone else's sh!tty root work.

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. . . though I do like a bargain. I guess it's the price to be paid; I just have to wonder what was going through the head of the last person who potted this tree . . .
 
Here's the chunk that came off the top today. The flat spot at the top is where that air layer was separated, and the thicker branch going left is my new apex.

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Much better. Taper!
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Perhaps a ground layer is in order? Last season I did a lot of air layers/ground layers to restart or improve nebari.
 
Perhaps a ground layer is in order? Last season I did a lot of air layers/ground layers to restart or improve nebari.
A ground layer around the lower red line
A substantial part of the conversation in this thread was about that option. I was pretty convinced that was my plan, but I've decided to hold off for the moment.
 
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So that's fall 2015 to spring 2017 so far. I still plan to cut the apex back more, but I'm waiting to see where it buds first. The height difference is deceptive looking at the side-by-side - the current apex is around halfway up the left photo!
 
A substantial part of the conversation in this thread was about that option. I was pretty convinced that was my plan, but I've decided to hold off for the moment.
I did look through this thread at one point but I forgot that was mentioned. Anyhow it looks like you've made a lot of progress. I look forward to future updates.
 
I realized I could give you all a much better impression of the change in size of the tree if I used the same scale in both photos (note that the distance to the background is different). When the trunk is about the same size, you can see clearly how much the height has been reduced, from both above and below:
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You know what they say . . . "cut off everything that isn't bonsai" ;)
 
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