AusBonsai

Ive recently taken a 10 plus year old callistemon from my garden and put in a large training pot, I have hard chopped it back to about 2 feet in height. I have been rather brutal with this tree for a reason I will explain later if it works out.

I am asking this question a bit arse about as I should have asked before doing it.....but will a callistemon send out new growth/back bud from old wood?

Any advice would be appreciate even if its just learning from my mistakes.

Well, yes, they do. But this is the way to find out. Aftercare is important. Dappled shade, misting during the day etc.

Thanks for the info Bodhi, your advice is always appreciated. After care is as you suggested, and this Calli is being spoilt now.

Ps. Great thread on the elm (my favourite species) in time I will gain the courage to try one of these big old girls. Question,in time I will be in the market for a large collected elm, do you ever sell these???

I am no expert with the Callistemon but I do have a couple of observations.

It seems they are quite good at back budding on old wood. But it seems they can also get quite stressed by being cut back very hard.

I found this when a stock tree (given to me by the mother in law I think) that was not much good for anything except that it had an interesting curve at the top. So I decided to cut everything away at this point just leaving a little leader in the hope that this interesting part could be air layered of later.
Over the next week the leaves left at the top started to wither and die. Nothing else had been done to the tree and the lower branches still grew as normal. I have never seen anything like this happen on a tree before. (although there was the weird happening of a gum that was booming in the ground up and cark it after the third heavy prune in one season as it was growing so fast )
I discussed this with Pup and he stated that they do not like to be cut back too hard (callistemon), although generally they do not seem to have a problem if you cut them back past any leaves as it has been seen with some other natives.
After about a month this top section then decided to sprout out agian which is in itself very wierd and not what you would expect from a normal tree considering that it seemed like the tree had made a serious decision to just give up on this top section.

This lead me to trying to leave as much foliage on collected trees as possible while still considering the balance between root and shoot reduction.
The only conclusion I have come to is that there are many exceptions to the rule with callistemons and many other of our natives.
Keep the experiments coming

philf555 wrote:Ps. Great thread on the elm (my favourite species) in time I will gain the courage to try one of these big old girls. Question,in time I will be in the market for a large collected elm, do you ever sell these???

Yes, and have quite a few for sale at the moment.

Thanks Bodhi, Ive just enrolled in a bonsai school to help teach me a bit more than the self tought (and learned from this site) info I have. Not comfortable risking something like a large elm as yet but will Definately look you up as my courage to keep one grows. Thanks again.

I've found most callis to be pretty tough with respect to cutting back, at least here in Canberra. I dug up one that was about 5 m high and about 8-10 cm diameter near the base. Cut all roots back to what would fit in styrofoam box and filled it with sand. It reprouted well, up and down the trunk, which had no leaves on it at all.

I've found that C. pallidus tends to be a bit sentive to having its roots cut and may take 6 months to recover with new leaf growth. The Callistemon viminalis and cultivars of it seem to be very tough.