Project BudBurst

Phenology. Literally "The Science of Appearances." We're concerning ourselves with the physical manifestation of phenotypes, but in this case, the *timing* of those things. Migration. Reproduction. Flowering. Budburst.

Project BudBurst is a.... well, I'll let them speak for themselves. From their website:

What is Project BudBurst?
We are a network of people across the United
States who monitor plants as the seasons change. We are a national field
campaign designed to engage the public in the collection of important ecological
data based on the timing of leafing, flowering, and fruiting of plants (plant
phenophases). Project BudBurst participants make careful observations of these
plant phenophases. The data are being collected in a consistent manner across
the country so that scientists can use the data to learn more about the
responsiveness of individual plant species to changes in climate locally,
regionally, and nationally. Thousands of people from all 50 states have
participated. Project BudBurst began in 2007 in response to requests from people
like you who wanted to make a meaningful contribution to understanding changes
in our environment.

Project BudBurst is a lot like the Great Backyard Birdwatch in that it is a scientific effort being undertaken by individuals to create a large enough, statistical data base to be relevant in the field. While this is not related to bonsai specifically, the findings and information gathered by the project is useful to environmental and botanical endevours all around. It is free to participate it and you can participate in as small (or as large) of a way as you desire. At the moment, it is limited to the US (though if anyone knows of similar projects for other areas of the world, I would be very interested, drop me a link). Check it out. For SCIENCE!

Winter Flowering Bonsai, Part 1 - Witch Hazel

Hamamelis; Witch Hazel

I wish I knew who to attribute this to/where it came from. All I know is that the folks selling Witch Hazel seeds online seem to love this particular image. Not that I can really blame them.

Winter flowering bonsai are frequently overlooked in comparison to their more multi season friends; pines, maples, junipers.... and for good reason. Many shrubs and trees that flower in winter or very early spring make challenging bonsai specimens. Witch Hazel (of which several varieties are currently in bloom here on Long Island) for instance has large leaves that do not reduce well, and which grow at awkward appearing angles from the branches, making them mostly single season interest trees. Take the tree below, from the Chicago Bontanic Garden collection. Hamamelis japonica, Japanese Witch Hazel, in summer leaf.




Untidy, isn't it?

But take a look at the same tree in its winter dress.




Whole different ball of wax.

Some tips on growing Witch Hazel:

-There are dozens of species of Witch Hazel, many of which have different bloom times, usually lasting for about a month, ranging from October to February in northern areas. Hardiness ranges from zone 8 to zone 3, so be certain that the species you are choosing is appropriate for your winters. A cold frame or hoop house style green house can mitigate those requirements.

-Related to the above, several species have different coloured flowering varieties available. They come in whites, pinks, oranges, reds and bronzes. Many are not as vigorous as the typical yellow flowering varieties, and may prove more susceptible to disease, or may not be as cold hardy as the species. Keep this in mind when experimenting with different cultivars.

-Because you will be showing this tree when it is naked, the ramification and fine branch structure is incredibly important. Witch Hazels can have lovely, fine and delicate branching with some work, and are well worth the effort.

- Well cared for and fertilized, many species of Witch Hazel can take a lot of insult and heavy pruning. Limit the majority of your pruning to early spring to early summer, to allow the tree to rest and form buds for the following winter if you expect to show it.


-Witch Hazels like full sun to partial shade, and when grown in the landscape can tolerate quite a bit of shade. In a bonsai pot especially, offer protection during the summer from midday sun, and their leaves can scorch.

-In the summer, Witch Hazels tend to like a lot of water, and while good drainage is required, these trees should be allowed to remain moist and never allowed to dry out.

-Witch Hazels are largely pest resistant, though occasional scale and aphids will be a problem, especially if over fertilized in mid to late spring. They are also a loved food of certain caterpillars, but this is less of a problem in bonsai cultivation than it is in the landscape. H. mollis, Chinese Witch Hazel is sometimes noted with Powdery Mildew.

-Fertilizing is fairly standard for an average deciduous tree. An occasional dose of an acidic fertilizer can be beneficial, as they prefer slightly acidic conditions.

Having bonsai that look good year round is a great thing, so great as to be impossible to overrate really. But the joy of a winter flowering bonsai cannot simply be ignored by those of us who live in temperate climates. When this quiet time of year rolls around, the winter and early spring flowering choices, both on the bench and in the landscape, keep my heart warm during the quiet months. I look forward to each new flowering as they come. The fall flowering camellias and seven sons tree. Winter hazels, sweet box, mahonia, persian ironwood and erica. Before we even get to plum and cherry, the wintersweet, winter jasmine and forsythia brighten our days. Some of these are suitable for bonsai; others are very much not (I imagine trying to bonsai a mahonia would be a lesson in abject pain and disappointment for any practitioner. But then, there *are* people who bonsai poison ivy, so to each their own). And each winter flowering species has its challenges and disadvantages. But these are trees that personally at least, I would like to try to work with more frequently.

USDA Cold Hardiness Update

Samazana ni
hana sakikeri to
mishi nobe no
onaji iro ni mo
shimogarenikeru

Fields we saw
blooming with
so many different flowers,
frost withered now
to a single hue.

-Saigyo, Poems of a Mountain Home

Here in the North East we are firmly entrenched in winter. Though it's been relatively mild on the whole, I still find myself staring longingly in to the cold. When I can't stand it any more, I head outside and putter about, but really, there's nothing much to do other than long for spring and contemplate these quiet times.

Now that we've mused a bit, some real news of interest, though admitedly, it effects growing plants in the ground far more than it effects our bonsai. The USDA has updated its Hardiness zones. Discussion about global warming aside, the map has been updated to reflect the trends of warmer winters here in the states since the last time it was updated in 1990. You can find a good copy of the new map here: http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/. There is an option to search for your location by zip code, which is handy for those folks on the edges of zones.

This may mean little to some people. It may be important to others. It might prompt some to try their hand at a tree not normally viable in their previous zone, but which would more easily survive with the updated map. What it will mean will be some different stock possibly available at local nurseries, and the buyers become aware of this change and can reasonable expand their stock by a whole zone. As bonsai growers, we have always, and will always, offer additional winter protection to our plants, and the change of my own location from zone 6B to zone 7A won't be changing that. But maybe I'll take a gander at a few species I was on the fence about before. Hmmmm.....

Carpinus betulus 'Columnaris'

So its become pretty obvious that I don't really like to share my trees. Knowledge, tidbits, photos, yes, but my trees? Not so much. There are a couple of reasons for that, many of which sound like excuses, even to *me*. But the most important one is this:


I don't really have a lot of trees worth sharing yet. For a number of reasons that are relatively unimportant right now. Living in an area far away from anywhere I could collect, limited funds of a family where despite a love, bonsai gets ranked toward the bottom of needs, and the dying nursery business on Long Island (we've lost both of our bonsai nurseries here in the last four years or so), leave finding really good stock difficult, and leaves me instead with many pieces that are definitely 10-20 year projects. Which is good, because I'll be doing this the rest of my life! But bad for showing work on a blog.


Well, I'm going to do my best to change that. Some of the pieces I have I *can* share, and the only thing preventing me are unspoken excuses. So while they aren't anywhere near finished (though what bonsai is) I'm going to bite the bullet and start putting them up here.

Carpinus betulus 'Columnaris'. Columnar European Hornbeam. I picked this piece up at a place called Peconic River Herb farm about three years ago. I wish I had pictures from that year, but the computer they were all on is vindictive and cruel. I brought the height down by almost half. It is currently 30 inches tall. I have a lot of thinning out to do, after a season of unrestricted growth, and this tree seems prone to sending out shoots right above each other. There is a spot in particular where a very thick branch comes off of the trunk on the right hand side that I will probably remove. It contributes to the silhouette, but the branch is nearly as thick as the trunk at that point and while it looks good in leaf, that particular issue is a lot more obvious this time of year. It will leave a rather large bare spot, but a bit of a rotation will help that, and the tree is very good at sending out copious quantities of new shoots at the slightest provocation.

I know I should shorten the tree to give it a heavier look. And I know that I *should* wire down the branches. I will probably shorten it a bit, but since this is a columnar form I'm hesitant to do too much in the way of fighting mother nature on the wiring down issue.

Where's the Colour?

Steven Katovich, USDA Forest Service, Bugwood.org
Fall color in northern Wisconsin, paper birch, and red maple.

"Why weren't the leaves as awesome this year?"

"My bonsai were kinda bleh this fall, I don't understand."

"The Japanese Maple in my front yard turns fantastic colours most years, but not this one. Why?"

"Where's the colour?!?"


From all quarters, there has been the same question this fall. "Where's the colour?" Over and over again that question repeated as autumn enthusists gazed over the yellows and browns, eagerly awaiting the vermillion foliage that typifies an East Coast fall. And over and over again, they were disappointed.

Oh, the golds and russets were lovely. But it just wasn't the same. Though there were a few die hard species in this area that, right at the end, put on a quiet, tired display that mimiced their reds of years past, here on Long Island we simply didn't see the autumn display that we usually do.

And we weren't the only ones.

So, what happened? Why was the colour muted this autumn? Why did the trees that turn yellow seem to be ok, but our glorious reds were, well, not so glorious.

For that we have to start with the science of why leaves change colour. During the late spring and summer, leaves are busy. Working hard. Making and utilizing chlorophyll, the green pigment which is where photosynthesis occurs. And therein lies the beginning of the entire cycle of energy on earth – plants take sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and create sugars and oxygen. Without this process, we wouldn’t even be here; there’d be no food, not enough free, breathable, oxygen. If this isn’t amazing enough for you, well, I don’t really know what else to say, and you should probably try a different blog.

Senescence in plants is the period of time between leaf maturity (where they are a sugar factory chugging out that beautiful oxygen by-product) and leaf death. A lot happens in that time, but the part that interests us here is the withdrawal and absorption of the chlorophyll. Triggered by cooling temperatures and shorter days, trees in temperate climates start to shuttle the energy and nutrient rich chlorophyll from their leaves, breaking them down in the process and returning those nutrients to their roots to store for the winter. Some of those nutrients and energy are what that tree is going to use come spring to start the whole process over again.

Now, yellow leaves are pretty straight forward. The yellow colour you are seeing is what is left behind when the more strongly pigmented chlorophyll is gone. As the chlorophyll is broken down and drawn back out during senescence, the yellow colour is unmasked. It was always there, we just couldn’t see it. These pigments are called carotenoids, an antioxidant specifically in place in the leaves to protect them from some of the damaging byproducts of photosynthesis. (For more about that, google ‘oxidation’ and ‘free radicals’ or just leave a note in the comments that you are interested in more SCIENCE in this blog, and I’ll be happy to oblige. For now though, we’re going to try to stay on topic with the science.)

Red leaves are a bit more complex. For the full story on just how complex you can see the original paper on it here: http://treephys.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/1.short. That’s just a link to the abstract, but you can get to the whole thing from there. “The physiological significance of anthocyanins during autumnal leaf senescence.” That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s see if we can break it down a bit and backtrack. A lot of that article is about the selective pressures, explaining WHY some trees tend to be red in the fall when others are yellow. It’s an interesting read, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The red pigments that you see in autumn foliage are called anthocyanins. While carotenoids are simply left behind during senescence, anthocyanins are actually created by the plant as the chlorophyll is getting broken down. The mystery to scientists of course (which is part of the focus of the above paper), is why a plant would waste precious energy at the time of year where it needed to store every bit of it possible.

As it turns out, anthocyanins protect the leaf from damage from the sun directly. While the chlorophyll is being broken down, the leaves are more susceptible to damage, and would fall sooner, possibly before all of the chlorophyll had been absorbed by the tree. The anthocyanins protect the leaves, buying time and allowing the tree to absorb more of the chlorophyll and other nutrients before leaf death occurs. You might notice that many trees that turn red in the autumn turn a shade of darker burgundy before that brilliant crimson hue. That’s the point where there is enough of a mix of the unbroken down chlorophyll and newly created anthocyanins exist simultaneously in the leaf, creating that intermediate colour.

Trees that create anthocyanins also create carotenoids; the red pigment in the anthocyanins is just stronger than the carotenoids in these species, which is why red is the colour you see. Different species however will make different concentrations, which accounts for the breadth of red and orange hues available in the autumn palette.

There are theories about why some trees create anthocyanins and others do not. Many of those that do not are considered ‘pioneer’ species; species that are the first to colonize open land, and are already evolutionarily more adapted to high sunlight situations. Many of the trees that create them are those that evolved as secondary species, coming in after the colonizers. Many of these species start their lives as understory plants, growing in the shade of the first comers. Though they eventually outgrow their companions and take over a forest, the continued need for some protection from the sun may have led to the development of the anthocyanins. Trees that could tolerate shade in youth and then would be protected by the sun from internal sources at maturity would have naturally outperformed those that could not. This is mostly a concern in areas where fall days are sunny. It’s one of the reasons many native European species (not all, just quite a few) and those in the Pacific Northwest, tend toward the yellow end of the spectrum. In areas where autumns tend more toward the cool and cloudy, there is less biological pressure for those trees that begin life in the understory to protect their dying leaves.

This is all very nice and all. But why was the autumn colour this year so poor?

Many of the trees that normally are yellow in the fall seemed to do just fine. The problems came with our anthocyanin species.

There are many factors that will affect autumn foliage, and these can start as early as spring. Some known factors that will decrease leaf colour in the fall:

-A late spring.
- Summer drought.
-Uncharacteristic high temperatures in summer.

All of the above are likely to stress the tree and/or cause damage to the leaves. Though they do not directly affect the production of anthocyanins, they make the whole thing far more difficult and leave the trees with less resources to work with.

-Longer high temperatures in to autumn than usual, followed by a sudden drop and frost.
-Too warm nights in autumn.
-Not enough sunny days in late summer and autumn.
-Early autumn with cooler than usual days.

These four are situations that will direct impact the formation of anthocyanins. The best conditions for good autumn foliage? Typical (whatever that is for your area) spring and summer conditions, followed by warm, sunny autumn days and crisp, cool (but not freezing) autumn nights. During the warm days, the trees are producing sugars like mad, but the cool nights constrict the veins of the leaves and prevent many of these sugars from being absorbed again. Concentrated sugars and sun are part of what begin the process that spurs the tree to make anthocyanins.

What can we do about it, to bring the topic back around to our bonsai? Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot that we don’t already do. During periods of drought and high temperatures we can water and shade our trees properly, bringing them back out in to more sun again once the end of summer rolls around. The temperature and cloud cover are out of our control largely, and so far as I know, there is no information out there about using grow lamps during cloudy autumns to improve colour (if you try it, document it and document it well).

Here on the East Coast of the USA, our problems were definitely the summer drought and high temperatures of summer(112F days were killer), combined with a very rainy and cloudy late summer. We also kept our unseasonably warm temperatures later than usually, and had an exceedingly short period of properly cool nights with warm days. A lot of factors went in to this year’s autumn being dominated by the yellows and browns. While we can adjust the input to our bonsai far more than the general input to the plants in the landscape, we are still ultimately at the whims of local and global climate.

Blog Roll

You may notice two new additions to the blog roll. If you read Wayne's work over at Bonsai Bark you're probably already familiar with them (and if you aren't already reading over there, well, why the heck not?)

Forgive the links to pictures instead of pictures, the photoclient is being buggy.

*****


The older of the two is Peter Tea Bonsai, a Journey of a Bonsai Apprentice at Aichi-en, Japan.

Some of the pictures from his latest post about the Taiken-ten (ok, maybe not some but all) leave me wistful and a little jealous of his adventures. The fact that he's going so far to catalogue and share those adventures thrills me and makes me smile. So I figure it evens out.

There are, no surprise, some amazing bonsai featured, just in that post alone. While there are some really fantastic conifers, I admit that the two that jumped out at me the most were an Azalea and a Princess Persimmon.

The Azalea appeals for the classic, powerful 'wow, that's some azalea', reasons.

I like the persimmon because there is a small child in me who saw the picture and immediately thought "Why didn't I know strawberries grew on trees?!" despite being perfectly aware of that they do not. I got very excited and confused for a minute. The fruits on that tree are miniature and perfect and while it may not be something that a lot of us here in the US consider desirable in a bonsai, it struck *me* with a sense of giggles and wonder.

One of the things I like best about the blog though so far, is that he's very casual, interjects vingettes and interesting tidbits that aren't strictly about the art of that bonsai. Like Peter's comment about the persimmon. "Now that is a lot of princess persimmons! Just a warning, for those who may not know. The persimmons taste horrible! I sacrificed my taste buds to get the word out."


There are about a half dozen other things I could comment on, but I'm going to let his blog speak for itself. It really doesn't need my help.

(Pssst.... look for the two ginkgos and the pine from Hiroshima in that same post. Well worth it.)


*****

The second blog, very recently launched, is Capital Bonsai, which features bonsai from the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum.

Besides featuring fantastic trees right here in the US, it's shaping up to be a great behind the scenes catalogue of the Museum. The first post about their first tree is a story I feel not a lot of people would have been familiar with for instance.

Is it obvious I like stories? I like stories. And bonsai. So the two together are exceedingly interesting in my book.

Though there are less than a half dozen posts so far, already the photography is grade A, and I look forward to more of it. For those of you who can't get enough of high quality photographs of beautiful bonsai, this looks like it'll be a great spot to go. In their Autumn Bonsai post they set the bar, and you won't be disappointed. Two favorites of mine from that post are the Toringo Crabapple and a shohin Trident Maple.

I'll be keeping an eye out here, looking forward to more.

Epcot Flower and Garden Show 2011

Long overdue photos, taken during the Epcot Flower and Garden Show last February. I wish I knew who all these trees belonged to. I know they are trees from the members of the Bonsai Socities of Florida. I should have written down all of the info on the cards, but wrangling the family made just getting the snap shots a priority. Some of them I can still read in the photo if I zoom, so any information I can share that way, I will. If anyone knows additional info about any of these trees, I'd love to share it.

Click photos for full view.

Ficus nerifolia, Willow Leaf Ficus

Ficus nerifolia, Willow Leaf Ficus detail.

Ilex sp.

Ficus microcarpa "Green Island". Years in training: 10. Presented by: Erik Vigert

Details of Ficus microcarpa "Green Island". Plus little friend.

Podocarpus macrophyllus, Japanese Yew. Years in training: 10. Presented by: Charles Michelson.




Bouganvillea glabra, Paper flower. Years in training: 1. Presented by Tony Stewart.

Elm.




Casuarin




Ficus nerifolia, Willow Leaf Ficus. Years in training: 30. Presented by: Charles Michelson.






Details Ficus nerifolia.



And simply because it made me smile.....

Panda topiary!