AusBonsai

I've been a bit hesitant to post my collected trees from 2020 and 2021 until they've got through two summers, due to fear of jinxing them. I'm not a superstitious person but something about little trees in pots gets me behaving a little strange.

However Greg's awesome posts over the last few years have got me inspired to share some more South Aussie finds.

More photos to follow as and when I can be a***ssed editing them

With my parents extending a pergola at the farmhouse = I get a few old grape vines.

I'm most excited about this one,



The elegant one on the left I'm hopeful I can make into a pseudo literati with a single bunch of grapes hanging from the top, framed by the twisting trunk. 10 years should be enough time to work out if that design is plausible or not. The one on the right will probably end up on the burn pile but not before trying some carving and heavy bending first. There's another 4 medium size vines (mostly uninspiring), I don't have any pictures of and a few small wild roses. Possibly Rosa Sempervirens, they're mostly evergreen, thornless and with nice small leaves I should be able to make a shohin or two.
And lastly an attractive but quite burnt blue gum

I'm not a huge fan of olives but seeing as we have so many ferals in our national parks I figured I should have a couple in my collection. This one initially caught my eye as it's natural growth habit is quite ribbon shaped.
I'm not that attached to it and there's another 10million out there so I decided to get some practice creating sharing whilst also seeing how much abuse a wild olive can handle at collection time. It's been almost 3 months since collection and it hasn't budded out yet, but it hasn't died back much either. I realise olives don't like our winter much and late autumn is probably the worse time to collect them, but I was bored and wanted to see how tough they can be.

Next up is the first 3 of 15ish hawthorns. By far my favourite tree to collect so far, I just wish they were a little quicker growing new roots. So far 2 didn't make it through last summer and one more was looking very sad heading in to dormancy.

Hawthorn 1 clump

Great thread, and good collecting, congrats.

Cheers Watto, I hope you'll enjoy some of the Prunus when they make an appearance

I've been waiting for this thread to appear

Those grapes and hawthorns look awesome, nice score.

I do enjoy clambering around on hill sides, even if I don't find anything worth digging.

I'm having my morning coffee and I'm enjoying this thread! Great photos and some interesting finds. Well done.

Great score you’ve got yourself.
What a wonderful place to hike looking for trees, even without finding trees. Just lovely, cute company too
That dark coloured Hawthorn you got yourself reminds me more of wild plums.
Cheers
Kirky

Couldn't agree more Kirky, I am lucky to live so close to heaps of hiking locations, and am very privileged to have permission to collect in some of them. As most collectors would know, the amount of time hiking, checking new locations and scanning for the diamonds in the sticks, compared to the actual time colleting is probably 10-20:1. So, you better enjoy the hiking as well or it will quickly become a chore, and a boring way to spend a large portion of your leisure time.

Prunus collecting site 1

This one's for Watto, and is my official application to the 'Watto's Aussie Prunus Yamadori Club. If my entry isn't up to scratch I'll be forced to go collect another 20 of them.

I think these are all prunus cerasifera (Wild Cherry Plum/Black Plum), but there are Prunus Mahaleb (St Lucie Cherry) in the area and I haven't had a chance to closely inspect the juvenile bark of each species while in leaf to be able to confidently call it just yet. I should know soon enough though.

Prunus 1
I was attracted to this monstrosity by two subtle twisting live veins (my absurd imagination instantly pictured a prunus mume from one of my kokufu albums), but after roughly 45 minutes of digging I was quite disappointed to find a heap of drill holes around the base, the ominous sign of poisoning.

I couldn't be too upset as it was growing in a reasonably well managed national park and was only 2m from the walking trail. I soldiered on and found it was mostly rotten around the drill holes, I figured this meant it was poisoned at least a year or two ago, and there were no drill holes in the live veins, amazing, this one might make it after all.


This little guy was a root sucker growing in the same hole, may as well try a shohin semi/cascade with it. I've used paper towel to wrap the chaotic roots downwards, I'm hoping it rots away and the roots have held the new position.
The others are slender trunks that may end up being elegant enough to earn a bonsai pot in the next 5 years. The main reason they were collected is to gather some more data on collecting prunus in SA. We seem to have hawthorn down pat here, getting 80-90% success rates but there doesn't seem to be much collective knowledge on prunus, seemingly because they are far less abundant. Watto's tall and skinny plum has given me hope that some of these may become bonsai.

Yet another great day out. Love the slender trunks lots of potential for some interesting trees!
Cheers
Kirky

A couple more of the hawthorns

This big one caught my eye growing out of a slope

Sometimes when you start digging around the base you find some magic, other times the opposite. Sadly when I started digging this one I found a straight trunk that just keep going and going. I was contemplating giving up multiple times but noticed a few fine roots that looked different to the grasses. Some fine teasing out of the clay ensued and this is what I ended up with.

Deleted message

I give up I have no idea how to delete messages that duplicate