The history
May 2013
This was a specimen stock tree held by Marcus Watts of Cornwall and was being styled today for its new owner in North Cornwall.
It is a mature Japanese White Pine, grafted to a Black Pine base and judging from the white pine bark flaking along the branches it will likely be a 50+ year old tree. (More about the best way to estimate a pine bonsai age at the end.
Here is the tree at 8am…
And here is the tree after a first styling session – lots of care was taken as the tree was waking. Branches were raffia’d and all wiring stopped short of the needles and new shoots. That day was all about placing the branches and starting the tree on its first stage – refinement and fine wiring to the tips is a thing to do in a couple of winters time.
You have the widest trunk base visible, trunk movement going left flowing into the longer branches on the left also. Then moving up the tree, start going back to the right and have shorter branches this side. The super powerful trunk is framed beautifully by the foliage and as first stylings go – a winner.
A good day to see the tree forming from the mushroom mop that was started with. Styling time of 6 hours and now the tree had moved on to a new owner in North Cornwall.
How to try and put an age to a White Pine bonsai…
The trees are originally grafted – by researching and looking back through Japanese bonsai history the earliest known records of a nursery mixing black and white pine seems to be 1928 – there are no mentions or records of this technique being done before this date.
This gives us an oldest possible age for these types of trees of 85 years, but the chances of the first trees being exported are slim to nonexistent. But we know for certain the 100 year + age tags sometimes seen on these trees are using more than a bit of artistic licence!
Now we can add a few more facts into the mixing pot – the actual variety of white pine often used commercially for the top is selected to be very user friendly. It produces many buds so the dense pads form quite easily and the tree makes some inner buds too, so the shoots can periodically be cut back to new inner growth.
We can look at how the trees were initially shaped too – curves going up through the trunk and added movement indicate a tree designed to be a definite commercial bonsai. And as there was a huge increase in interest following the second world war after westerners started encountering the captivating miniature Japanese trees, many such trees were started in greater numbers and grown on in fields.
This gives us a realistic age bracket for all the large exported white pine bonsai of between 30 and 65 years. The physical size of the tree means very little too – a 2ft one can easily be twice the age of a 3ft 6″ one.
So our final clue to best guess age is bark formation – the black pine flakes from a young age but the white pine seems to stay a smoother silver grey for much longer. The older the tree, the more the white pine bark flakes and shows maturity that matches the lower trunk until the oldest trees have bark that virtually matches all over.
Young trees have smoother silvery bark above the graft (10 – 20 years)
Slightly older trees show the flaked bark starting to creep up the trunk but the upper tree and branches still appear smooth (20 – 35 years)
As the upper trunk and primary branches get texture the tree is moving on through its 40’s and a fully barked tree will be in its 50’s – give or take a few years either way but you won’t be far off using your eyes and observation to best guess a white pine age.
Back to the history…
March 2017 – repotting
Now with a new owner, I immediately carried out a repot and commenced removal of wire and raffia.
Repotting indicated some good mycorrhizae after significant effort to remove the plant from its pot. I’ve never struggled so much with removing a tree from pot before. But this was extraordinarily difficult!
An open mix previously made up from Bonsai@16 was used and sited in the garden.
Wire removal was urgently carried out as significant damage was already evident on branches.
June 2017 – pruning
The basic routine entailed:
- Cutting off long candles with spaces at the bottom if there is a smaller candle with needles at the base of it.
- If you only have one candle at the end cut it in half, missing the needle
- If you have a decent candle further back on same shoot then cut off the whole shoot beyond the decent inner candle.
July 2017 – wiring
October 2017 – yellowing of needles
Old needles showing as yellow and ready for a quick brushing down.
August 2024
It’s been 7 years since the last repot, the soil is now very compacted and despite some drilling of holes to help water penetration, it really needs some fresh soil. I’ve always repotted in spring, but with advice and some reassurance I decided that a late summer / early autumn repot would be done. Here’s the video…