While at a local show one tree caught my eye. It was a Maritime Pine or Pinus pinaster. It had great movement and some really interesting features that made it great bonsai material.

We don’t see a whole lot of maritime pines in Australia but after spending my time looking over this tree I think I would like to find one for my own collection.

The bark was fantastic and old and had deep cracks through the red/orange coloured plates which was very similar to the bark on some collected trees I had seen in Japan. This really gave it the appearance of a very old tree.

The fissured bark

The tree also had very interesting movement in the upper sections of the bonsai.

The twisting trunk

You can start to see the red colour in the bark.

What was really interesting about this tree was around the back of the trunk where there was an old shari. Around the edge of the shari some strange blobs had formed which almost looked like fingers or melting candle wax.

A thumb with finger nail perhaps?

The thumb above with some more fingers growing further down the trunk.

The one factor letting down this species would probably be the needles. They are very course and quite long. These long course needles had me thinking of images of what a tree like this could look like after a few years grafting either Japanese black, or Japanese Red Pine foliage onto the fantastic trunk and base.

The whole tree complete with difficult to photograph background.

A nice tree I would love to have on my bench. It is an interesting species I will be keeping an eye out for one in the future.

Is anyone growing this species? I would love to hear about it and or any species specific techniques you use.