I'm sharing the beginning to recent shots of my first ever corky bark elm. I bought this from Steve at Bonsai Australian Grower in park ridge for $75 back in july 2009. Of course as you all know, the bark on these fellas can get really chunky and cracked (which means flippin great). The choice of stock corkies were pretty good, nothing too twisty trunk wise, and not much taper, but they had some interesting exposed roots that gave the base a feel of strength and stability. So I thought I could try my hand at a nice upright. I chose the most interesting one I could see and set to work.
This was my first jump into paying some good money for better stock, $75 scared me I can tell you. but I quickly learned that paying a bit more for good stock is the way to go.
Now one thing, this corky just goes MENTAL. This tree has got to be the most energized and perpetually shooting and growing tree I've ever had. It was almost silly, and even more energetic than a regular chinese elm. Have any of you found the same with corky bark elms?
here's some photos: (i'm not sure how some of you post smaller thumnails of photos, so please tell me if the larger ones are annoying bandwidth wise).
JULY 2009 - The day I bought her. I selected the thin shoots i wanted as branches, and did some very light wiring after this photo.
SEPTEMBER 2009 - I got all creative and tried this weird suspended pull down wiring rig that i sort of made up as I did it. It surprisingly did it's job really well
A few weeks later the shoots are growing well.
JANUARY 2010 - The corky grew great guns over summer, I gave it selective pinching to encourage what ended up being two lower shoots (thank heavens I got those). And at this point i gave it a good cut back and heavy and detailed wiring to make the most of the remaining season's growth energy.
other side of tree: This is the first time i've almost felt bad for the amount of wiring on a tree. the poor thing.
FEBRUARY 2010 - She shot out like crazy and boy was I happy.
JULY 2010 - After losing her leaves over winter, I could see that she gained alot of finer ramification (woohoo!). I wanted to keep it all, but made myself do the wise thing again and trim back this extended growth to keep the cycle of compact ramification going.
AUGUST 2010 - I didn't want to put her into an appropriate small pot just yet, but i did want to treat myself by putting her in a shallower pot. Plus she could use a good root prune. I gave her alot of fine wiring to get the sub-branches into place and set to work on the roots.
Boy these corkies can have a snakepit of roots. It was crazy.
The towel wrapped around the base of the trunk was because I was so petrified of accidentally breaking off the glorious cork bark as I root pruned, and this towel wrapping worked well. All the bark was safe and sound.
I chose a handmade pot from Chris at Red Dragon Bonsai, and i went with a larger one to give the lady some room to grow still, as she still has some branch width to gain. I'm enjoying incorporating a little penjing rock placement in some of my trees, it's fun to explore how this might compliment the tree. So I chose some reddish rocks to compliment the oncoming fresh bright green growth.
All placed and watered.
Top down view. You can see one of the original trunk chops that happened before I bought it.
Closeup of some rock placement around the roots.
SEPTEMBER 1st 2010 - The new buds have burst she's looking more alive. There are a couple old branches that i've jinned just because I didn't know what to do with them. In time i'll probably just chop them off.
For now i'm trying to style her in a 'wilder' sort of appearance, adding in the rock placement to almost look like the tree's been scooped out of the earth with it's surrounding area and dropped into a pot.
As always, feedback or comments welcome and appreciated!
See ya,
Jozaeh
Congrats, a nice story to follow, I enjoyed it.
taking the top half of trees of since 2005! 
. But it has paid dividends and 10 fold. 
