Gifted Moseri “Scotch” pine workable?

[CBarnard]

I was gifted this Scotch pine (Scotts Pine?). It was a complete bush, I cleaned it out to find massive wholes in late fall. Removing dead and weak branches left a lot of open wounds so I stopped and left it alone over winter. Going into Spring I would like to do SOMETHING with it, but other than pruning back a couple branches from each whorl, then leaving to heal each season seems like an unproductive mission and unlikely to help with the significant inverse tapper at each whorl. I don’t want to over prune these junctions leaving ring of almost no vascular system, and I’m not quite sure the tree could handle any drastic removal of leaders. Any ideas or suggestions?

 

[0soyoung]

My suggestion for you is to think of the tree as roots, nebari, trunk and one branch or whorl of foliage and that everything above that is there only for the purpose of making the trunk fatter and nebari wider. At some point you are going to decide that the trunk is thick enough and you will cut off everything above that. One of, or maybe the, branch of foliage it is left will be allowed to grow and manipulated into being the next trunk section (affecting taper) or will become the canopy. When this is (or these are) thin, they can be wired and bent into curves that please you - the tree needn't be left to do 'whatever'.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Judging from the pictures it's not making candles, but pushing foliage straight out of the buds. Is that observation correct?
Does the new foliage look different than regular needles?
If that's the case, it might be a little stressed out and pushing juvenile foliage as a response. That means, at least to me, that it's going to need some rest.

I try to make scots pines double flush before I consider them workable. It can be done, even with fresh collected ones. After that milestone, go with what 0soyoung says.

 

[CBarnard]

G. Wires,
I think you're right about foliage coming directly from the bud. I've attached pictures below of the bud/candles. They haven't fully hardened off, but aren't buds either. I believe the shorter needles are last year's bud/candles that seem frozen in place since I received the tree, no new growth yet since spring hasn't really started. Yes the newer needles are much smaller (~1”) than the extremely long (seemingly weak) older needles (+4”). I’ve heard pines get their strength from their roots more than vascular or foliage and although the tree isn’t completely root bound, it is getting very crowded for sure, so maybe that is the cause of less vigorous new growth? Should I leave upper tree to heal, do a minor root prune/clean up and re-pot into a growing pot to give the roots a chance to revitalize and get the tree stronger before dealing with whorls? Unfortunately I currently live in the city, so ground growing isn't an option.

Even so, is there anything at all I can do with the whorls at present? I worry if I push it into new growth with no branch pruning, the whorls will just thicken up even more... maybe not an issue if I need to cut leaders or even down to lowest branches?

OsoYoung,
I still don't know what the true base looks like, I started to clear it out last year, but there are so many surface roots and I was more concerned with clearing out the upper tree to get it light, I didn't keep digging down or cut out the surface roots. If a re-pot is in order I can dig into that in the coming weeks. Since the lower branches are fairly weak with no, or very unproductive buds, is it possible they can re-vitalize now that they are getting light? Should I remove anything above that would help push them, or would that cause more harm to the overall tree, and if I'm cutting back should I hold off on re-potting?

I am very hesitant to root prune, re-pot, and cut back all at the same time, and my MAIN objective is correct the whorls, but if I understand correctly, re-pot now, "pinch" any new candles in summer, major cut backs next fall/winter? Forgive, and correct me if I'm dead wrong.

Thank you for any additional direction!

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

This type of juvenile foliage is something I have only seen with mugo pines. When the roots are heavily damaged.
My theory behind this is as follows: the plant is stressed out and needs heaps of energy to restore, to that aim it produces weak juvenile foliage so that carbohydrate production can be active all year around. Even without actual flushes and bypassing normal regular growth. It is a sign that the tree needs time, it needs you to do nothing.
If it's tressed out, it's not going to thicken the whorls, it's most likely rebuilding an underground network. The foliage response is a response to tell you that taking it slow is the main goal for now.
See it as a computer loading screen maybe; you can click on a million things in the meantime, but it's not going to speed up the loading time if you do. So cutting roots is not something I'd advise right now.

If there are no candles to pinch, then you'll have to wait until they show up. These juvenile foliage units are not candles. You can get scots back to health quite fast, 4 to 6 months if you do it right, that should be your goal for now. Styling and other things can wait. If it dies because you did some work too soon, then all that already invested energy was spent for nothing.

I get the enthusiasm, I know the uneasy feeling. But for the long run, it's better to give it some time. It will tell you when it's ready.

 

[CBarnard]

G. Wires,
Thanks for the direction. I don't at all mind "doing nothing"... assuming basic care. I wonder what would have caused it to get stressed? I've not messed with any roots, other than exposing very minimum surface roots, and clearing out old (mostly dead) needles. I admittedly did prune off a few (~5-6) very small weak branches from the whorls back in late fall, nothing I would have expected to cause major stress. Seems too young to have any girdling roots below... maybe root aphids? I wonder what the Moseri cultivar of scotts pine has to do with the strange foliage and insane whorls? The more I look into the type of tree online (stock photo attached), I see very similar growth until getting into a "mature" state after around 5 years. Maybe these Moseri's aren't the best medium for "miniature representations of nature", and that's fine too.

When I first saw this tree I knew absolutely nothing about growing any plants (still pretty much the same) and actually thought it was a mugo since it was so bushy. I stared at it for a while at the nursery and moved on. A couple weeks later my soon-to-be wife, brought it home... if I don't keep it healthy she'll say something about representation of our love and yada yada yada. I want it to look cool, I need it to be healthy haha. Cheers!

 

[Adair M]

Here’s a description I found of the Moseri Scots pine:



There are some key words in there:

“Long needles in first flush”
“A real beauty in the large garden or landscape”

Personally, those are characteristics I try to avoid when choosing bonsai material.

It didn’t tale much detective work on my part to find this information. Googled it on my iPhone.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

I believe scots by default are suited for bonsai. I don't know this exact cultivar, but most of them have all the attributes that could make it a good bonsai.

A change of location, something that happened in the nursery, or with the previous owner.. There's no telling in what might be the root cause. My mugo with the same behavior has been pushing juvenile needles for almost a year now. So it could be anything, going back to fall 2016. Eventually that foliage will drop and be replaced by actual needles. From there, you can work forwards.
It's all up to you of course! Like I said, I don't know this cultivar.

But having seen both scots and nigra with super small needles at Noelanders/Trophy, I believe it can be done.

 

[CBarnard]

Adair,
Yea there is a little info on this specimen online, I’ve looked up as much as I could, including the site above. You are right that it may not be ideal, but it’s what I have, so I want to make it as interesting as possible while keeping it as healthy as I can; hopefully learning somethings in the process. Maybe someone on the forum has experience with the Moseri, and if not, I’ll become an iconoclast in the bonsai world by being the first haha.

 

[Adair M]

Adair,
Yea there is a little info on this specimen online, I’ve looked up as much as I could, including the site above. You are right that it may not be ideal, but it’s what I have, so I want to make it as interesting as possible while keeping it as healthy as I can; hopefully learning somethings in the process. Maybe someone on the forum has experience with the Moseri, and if not, I’ll become an iconoclast in the bonsai world by being the first haha.

A generic Scots Pine would be MUCH better than this particular cultivar.

Cultivars exist because someone noticed something about the way a particular branch grows that’s different than normal. It might be a good thing for bonsai, it might not.

Generally speaking, the best bonsai are made from ordinary material. NOT cultivars. Cultivars are usually propagated by grafts. So you start off with an issue right there. Most landscape nurseries are not concerned with making low grafts. So, they’re most often pretty ugly.

And then, are the characteristics of the tree good for bonsai?

This particular cultivar apparently puts out two flushes of growth every year. A spring flush that produces long needles, and a fall flush that produces a whorl of little branches with short needles. And then, the thing turns yellow every winter.

Egad, man! It’s a nightmare!