Need some advice on this elm

[memehongkong]

Hello All. I bought this elm from a local bonsai meet yesterday. $25 USD is a pretty good deal. It has some interesting trunk movement, and I was thinking if I can train it into cascading style. Is it possible to train elm in cascading style? I did a search and didn't find any elm in cascading, only see pictures of Pine, Junipers....etc.

What direction would you suggest? I will not do any work this season and focus on growth.

Thanks all for your help!

 

[Schmikah]

Hello All. I bought this elm from a local bonsai meet yesterday. $25 USD is a pretty good deal. It has some interesting trunk movement, and I was thinking if I can train it into cascading style. Is it possible to train elm in cascading style? I did a search and didn't find any elm in cascading, only see pictures of Pine, Junipers....etc.

What direction would you suggest? I will not do any work this season and focus on growth.

Thanks all for your help!

Hypothetically you could train it to be cascade. It's not very common for deciduous trees (that I've seen, so please don't come ripping me up in the comments with pics of 500 cascade deciduous). I would assume that's because people just don't associate deciduous with cascade.

If you were gonna go that route, I think you have two options.

1) try to bend the main trunk while it's still green. I'm not sure if it's still plyable but you definitely need some interest because a large section right now is arrow straight.

2) try to activate those dormant buds that are very apparent lower down on the green portion of the trunk. The lower the better. You can try to trim back the tree now to see if it will activate them but it's getting pretty late to do a hard trim or defoliation. In this case, you might have to wait until next year to do a hard prune to see what buds will activate. If you do get anything lower down on the trunk, you can train those to go in whatever direction you like while they're still young.

I'm sure there will be much more experienced people chime in on this one, but that's my 2 cents.

 

[BonsaiDTLA]

Hello All. I bought this elm from a local bonsai meet yesterday. $25 USD is a pretty good deal. It has some interesting trunk movement, and I was thinking if I can train it into cascading style. Is it possible to train elm in cascading style? I did a search and didn't find any elm in cascading, only see pictures of Pine, Junipers....etc.

What direction would you suggest? I will not do any work this season and focus on growth.

Thanks all for your help!

Train it to be cascade!! Why not!
Also, why not do any work this season?

 

[leatherback]

I am not sure I would go towards cascade. The first inches of trunk should have a reasonably sharp bend facilitating the tree to "fall over the edge of the pot". Next to this, a cascade simulates a tree pushed to the ground multiple times in its lifetime. So the trunk has mulitple bends in it. I do not realistically see that in yours. So you would have to grow the trunkline completely. Which can be done of course. But this tree does not should "cascade" to me.

Now.. What WOULD I do with this? Not sure, based on only these two. I might consider trimming the trunk A LOT lower, and get some taper and an informal upright, of maybe 1/3 of the height of the current tree

 

[TinyArt]

Brings to mind trees growing from eroded lake-shores, just as it is --

Come to the Dark Side, we have penjing!