2021 Shohin Contest from Starter Material - Italian cypress

[SilverShoe99]

I picked up this Italian Cypress a few months ago after I spotted the interesting trunk. It's not exactly pretty, but it is interesting. I've just been watering it and waiting for a moment of inspiration to strike.

Here's the tree before:



Here's the trunk interest - it was hard to capture just how bulbous it is





And here we've got it wired and first styled.





I'm not sure which of the two images I prefer. You can see that I've positioned the first branch differently - in the top photo I have two pads on the left before we get to the apex, and in the bottom I've made three. I'm curious to know what you think.

 

[SilverShoe99]

This tree's been responding well to the work I did a couple months ago



Looking closely at it today I noticed that the wire was starting to bite in on the trunk



I decided to rewire it. The way I like to do this is to unwire the tree - rather than cutting the wire off - and then rewire using the same wire but in the opposite direction.

Here's the tree without wire, and then a close up of the wire scars. You can see that two months isn't nearly enough time for the tree to lignify in place, so rewiring it is a must.





I'm not super worried about the scars. These trees are very vigorous growers, and I think they'll fade with time.

Here's a close-up of the re-applied wire



And the tree after the work. I've never had to re-wire a tree so early in the season before and I was amazed at how 'soft' the tree was. I had to be very, very careful removing the wire and then reapplying it because the bark just wanted to slide right off the cambium. Also, lots of the foliage growth is still moving and hasn't hardened off yet, and if I was careless I could have crushed it into mush.

 

[SilverShoe99]

I wasn't happy with how this tree had been working out, and actually tried giving it away at my club's last meeting. There were no takers, so it came home with me. I considered just chucking it into the bin but decided to have a go reducing it pretty drastically and giving it a restyle

 

[WinstonWolfe]

Much more successful post reduction. actually looking like you might have something there. Keep it up