2026 Native Collected Broadleaf Challenge

[DeepSouth]

Fwiw. The overarching “broadleaf tree” term is misleading and awkward. What you’re talking about are Deciduous Trees. Broadleaf is used to describe broad leafed evergreen trees that don’t shed their leaves in the fall-holly and live oak to name a couple.

Broadleaf as a botanical term is not only used to describe evergreens. I think the term is pretty clear and Wikipedia defines it well:

“A broad-leaved, broad-leaf, or broadleaf tree is any tree within the diverse botanical group of angiosperms that has flat leaves and produces seeds inside of fruits. It is one of two general types of trees, the other being a conifer, a tree with needle-like or scale-like leaves and seeds borne in woody cones. Broad-leaved trees are sometimes known as hardwoods.”

The winter silhouette will be nice to have for those that are also deciduous.

 

[DeepSouth]

Yes of course. They're that third category, but it's the term the OP used. I assume he meant both deciduous and broadleaf evergreens, but I've made bad assumptions before.

Your assumptions are correct.

 

[Desert O'Piñon]

I have my eye on several desert willow trees, a creosote bush, and some other Chihuahua Desert natives. I don't have the abundance of options that many others have in wetter climates. But I intend to make it work somehow. I've not been successful in collecting thus far.

 

[rims]

Just to clarify
"Collected" doesn't necessarily mean Yamadori. It can mean Air Layer and Hardwood cutting?

 

[Dav4]

Following this, it would appear that wild grape- Vitis species- doesn't fit the criteria of being a broad leaf tree... guess I gotta find me something else.

 

[DeepSouth]

Just to clarify
"Collected" doesn't necessarily mean Yamadori. It can mean Air Layer and Hardwood cutting?

It means collected from the ground, so an air layer or cutting would not qualify. The idea is to develop from a "stump." I will add some clarity on this to the original post.

 

[em901]

I'm new and just for fun will enter because...mostly all I have are "sticks in pots" that I collected this year. (Last month) When do we start? I don't see anyone posting, and I'm not really sure how it works, as far as threads on this topic. Do we each start our own post and add to it through the years, with the photos as per the rules? Just photos, or do we also include comments about the project?( I did read the rules and think I know where to post, but wasn't sure about when.) I imagine size matters here, and so this is just a fun challenge for me, my trees will not be large.

 

[KateM]

I'm new and just for fun will enter because...mostly all I have are "sticks in pots" that I collected this year. (Last month) When do we start? I don't see anyone posting, and I'm not really sure how it works, as far as threads on this topic. Do we each start our own post and add to it through the years, with the photos as per the rules? Just photos, or do we also include comments about the project?( I did read the rules and think I know where to post, but wasn't sure about when.) I imagine size matters here, and so this is just a fun challenge for me, my trees will not be large.

Yes, create your own thread. Name it according to the rules of the contest and update per requirements.
I personally did not start mine, because I am waiting to collect my entries in the spring.

 

[DeepSouth]

I plan to start collecting around the second week of February. I've had ~90% success rate at that time of the year for most species in my area.

I don't think we will see most people start posting until March/April.

 

[em901]

Thanks!

 

[JoeWilson]

It means collected from the ground, so an air layer or cutting would not qualify. The idea is to develop from a "stump." I will add some clarity on this to the original post.

Looking at the rules, collection stretches into 2027. Does this mean I can start to prune them and ground grow for the next year, and collect them in winter 2026 or so?

 

[Gabler]

Looking at the rules, collection stretches into 2027. Does this mean I can start to prune them and ground grow for the next year, and collect them in winter 2026 or so?

The idea behind the long collection window is to give everyone a full year to see whether our trees survive before entering them into the contest. In other words, start with five or more trees, since there is no guarantee they will live to see 2027. In 2027, you can choose your two favorites.

Moreover, pruning the tree a year before collection will weaken it, reducing your chance of collection success. In other words ...

 

[JoeWilson]

The idea behind the long collection window is to give everyone a full year to see whether our trees survive before entering them into the contest. In other words, start with five or more trees, since there is no guarantee they will live to see 2027. In 2027, you can choose your two favorites.

Moreover, pruning the tree a year before collection will weaken it, reducing your chance of collection success. In other words ...

View attachment 623782

If I trunk chop while it’s healthy and thriving in the ground, it gets a year of growth and recovery time in ideal conditions. I doubt that it will be any worse than ripping it out of the ground now, shocking the root system, waiting however long for it to bounce back, trunk chopping it then, and hoping it can respond as well in the confines of a pot. There’s a reason why trees develop much faster in the ground than they do in pots. It seems a little silly to disregard this in a time-limited challenge.

Even if I do no or very limited pruning, leaving it in the ground for another year could be very beneficial.

Anyway, judging by the lack of an actual answer to the question, I’ll assume this is fine.

(Feel free to point and laugh if I do this and it fails miserably.)

 

[leatherback]

Anyway, judging by the lack of an actual answer to the question, I’ll assume this is fine.

To me it makes sense to prune now, allow a resprout, and use the rootmass and then dig up.

To be honest, I never understand why there is an end to joining these things. In my mind things go: Lets do a little challenge. starting from now onwards. And then.. tree needs to be in a pot for at least a year at the end date.

 

[Gabler]

If I trunk chop while it’s healthy and thriving in the ground, it gets a year of growth and recovery time in ideal conditions. I doubt that it will be any worse than ripping it out of the ground now, shocking the root system, waiting however long for it to bounce back, trunk chopping it then, and hoping it can respond as well in the confines of a pot. There’s a reason why trees develop much faster in the ground than they do in pots. It seems a little silly to disregard this in a time-limited challenge.

Even if I do no or very limited pruning, leaving it in the ground for another year could be very beneficial.

Anyway, judging by the lack of an actual answer to the question, I’ll assume this is fine.

(Feel free to point and laugh if I do this and it fails miserably.)

A tree in a grow bed with plenty of sun, water, and fertilizer grows better in the ground. A tree from the wild will struggle to compete, and it will grow weaker over the course of the next year. With its limited resources, it will try to put all of its energy into regrowing what it lost. At the end of the year, it will have next to nothing in reserve. Then, you'll cut almost all of its roots off, asking it to regrow them to support a large crown without any energy reserves. Something like an elm might survive, but it is less than optimal. It is better to chop the roots and trunk at the same time at collection.

If you won't believe me from my own experience collecting wild trees, ask @rockm. I've seen him say the same thing.

 

[Gabler]

I never understand why there is an end to joining these things. In my mind things go: Lets do a little challenge. starting from now onwards. And then.. tree needs to be in a pot for at least a year at the end date.

Agreed. I don't know why there is a cutoff date. Notwithstanding, I am always reluctant to knock down Chesterton's Fence. Traditions are solutions to problems long since forgotten.

 

[em901]

I don't know much about bonsai yet, but how is it a bonsai if you train it while still in the ground and put it in a pot toward the end of a five year challenge? Isn't that just a dug up tree?

 

[em901]

My above post may have sounded both blunt and naive at the same time. I'm asking because I'm trying to figure out what kinds of entries there will be in this contest. I was thinking of developing something from recent collected seedlings, but that would be quite different from what is described in some posts, like apples to oranges. Anyway maybe the purpose of the contest is to show our diversity in region, skill levels, size preferences, and to have fun, so I guess it doesn't matter.

 

[JoeWilson]

A tree in a grow bed with plenty of sun, water, and fertilizer grows better in the ground. A tree from the wild will struggle to compete, and it will grow weaker over the course of the next year. With its limited resources, it will try to put all of its energy into regrowing what it lost. At the end of the year, it will have next to nothing in reserve. Then, you'll cut almost all of its roots off, asking it to regrow them to support a large crown without any energy reserves. Something like an elm might survive, but it is less than optimal. It is better to chop the roots and trunk at the same time at collection.

If you won't believe me from my own experience collecting wild trees, ask @rockm. I've seen him say the same thing.

Perhaps the context missing here is that the native trees I am considering are ones I've planted on my property, and I can give them plenty of those things, so the conditions would be closer to a grow bed.

Maybe the rules are a little ambiguous on this point, but these are landscape trees that I have planted and haven't been growing or styling specifically for bonsai. They're xeric species growing in minimally managed conditions, but now that I've decided to potentially use them, I could manage them for bonsai. This seems to be no different than beginning to manage them in a pot, to me.

 

[JoeWilson]

I don't know much about bonsai yet, but how is it a bonsai if you train it while still in the ground and put it in a pot toward the end of a five year challenge? Isn't that just a dug up tree?

Ground growing is a very common bonsai technique, especially if you don't want to wait a few decades for a trunk to thicken, for example. I'm not quite sure why this ended up being a controversial point.

As to what types of trees we will see, I wouldn't worry about it. By the nature of the rules, they will likely be very different. It seems like anything from saplings to wild collected trees that are many hundred of years old would be allowed. There won't be apples to apples or an even playing field for this one. Personally, I'm much more interested in seeing what species people work with and how they choose to develop them than who gets the plastic trophy at the end of the rainbow.