Nice Find

[BondaiNate]

I was at my local Nursery today and felt like I got very lucky in finding this stock for Bonsai. It did not have a tag on it and the workers at the nursery were not sure so they sold it to me for $20. I'm guessing it's a Cypress.

The trunk is nice and large (cant tell its age) and has some character to it for sure. It had a lot of dead foliage on the inside that I already cleaned out but I'm not sure where to go from here because this seems like such a nice find I dont want to mess anything up too bad.

Am I mostly wanting to clean it up to where I can visibly see the trunk all the way to the top? Any and all advice helps. Also pictures related to this might help.

Thanks!

 

[DonovanC]

Looks like a Hinoki to me. And it does have a pretty nice trunk. Someone with more experience will come along and be of more help though.

 

[Potawatomi13]

Rather looks like columnar Arborvitae here.

 

[DonovanC]

Rather looks like columnar Arborvitae here.

I thought thuja o. also but the foliage didn’t look quite right, so I went with Chamaecyparis obtusa. How does one tell the difference?

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

@BondaiNate - please add location to your profile, it really helps when others try to give you advice.

It doesn't matter, Hinoki, aka Chamaecyparis obtusa, or Thuja occidentalis, aka white cedar, arbor vitae. The bonsai and horticultural techniques used are the same.

The slight blue-ish tint to older leaves has me thinking Hinoki.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

Clean up for Thuja and Hinoki is opposite of what you might expect. You MUST keep any new buds on the trunk and new buds on the branches close to the trunk. These will be the future replacement branches for 5 or 10 years down the road.

Clean out dead. Remove any long thin branches with foliage only out at the tips.

I would consider order if work would be to repot right away, find the nebari, it could be deep in the pot. Move to a Anderson flat or shallow pot, like an azalea pan. Once you see the roots, do some pruning, remove crossing roots, try to get a nice radial spread of surface roots the repot into the new pot, deep enough you can bury the nebari again, at least half inch or a full centimeter. Reason is your want a level flat nebari, it roots are exposed too early in development, they die.

I would then let the repotted tree grow out until next year. During which time you will be read up on Hinoki and Thuja to understand training better. It is not simple to explain in one short note.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

You MUST keep any new buds on the trunk and new buds on the branches close to the trunk.

This is worth repeating. If you strip out the interior buds as part of the "clean-up" you will relegate this tree to the pom-pom trash pile.