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The tree I worked on this weekend was a corky bark elm. It’s a tree a friend grew and I purchased from him a year or so ago.

The tree as I received it.

When i bought the tree, the trunk was  covered in moss and the branch structure was difficult to see through the foliage. Once it was home, the first step was to prune the tree and clean the trunk and root base.

After a prune and clean up.

After cleaning the trunk and nebari and giving the foliage a good prune a few things became obvious. Firstly the tree had a good nebari thanks to the work my friend did while developing the stock. The trunk on the other hand was not bad but had a gentil curve in it which for some reason seemed awkward. The branch locations were ok but would require a fair amount of work to form an upright tree.

Un-potted

A season passed and I finally got around to re-potting. Re-potting was my chance to change the planting angle of the tree and really think towrads the future of the tree.

An Option?

I had toyed with the idea of making this tree a semi cascade while it was potted but once I bare-rooted the tree and tried it in a few semi-cascade positions I wasn’t entirely convinced. I spent some time tilting the tree this way and that, changing fronts, imagining grafted branches until I finally settled on a design.

Cambium layer exposed.

I pruned a few branches and also exposed some cambium in a couple of areas. The tree was to become a raft. Elms root very well but I felt a few areas of exposed cambium could only help speed rooting along the trunk up. I also put a couple bits of wire on the main branches to set the basic structure of the tree.

The final outcome.

This is a fairly one way solution. In order to get the trunk to lie over I have had to cut off half of the nebari making standing the tree up in the future not really an option. That said I am sure you would agree that this clump or turtle back style transformation is definitely one that has improved the tree for the better. The tree has a long way to go and it will be interesting to see how the corky bark copes with the close soil contact, that said I think that in the future it will grow into an interesting tree. Depending on how it leafs out, I will most probably give it a prune and full wire some time in mid summer. Hopefully by this time next year it will have rooted enough along the trunk to get it into a more shallow pot and really start its journey as a bonsai.