#Celtis Africana styled. Finding form in the emptiness

It's been a week since my last blog almost to the day. I got so busy I lost track of my blog. I know this is becoming a trend, but I will try my best to keep you in the loop.

I got to styling the #celtisafricana or more commonly known as a "witstink woud" tree. I mentioned in my previous blog that I will be styling the tree and repotting it, but after thinking a bit more about it I reconsidered the repotting. I will be taking you thought the process that I used to style the tree.

Here is the blog that I mentioned above:
https://steemit.com/bonsai/@romanolsamuels/back-at-it

This is the tree from the now back after I styled the tree.
This is the tree at the chosen front before any work was done.

Then I saw this tree I wanted to design a three trunk styled tree. But as faith would have it after looking at the roots and digging up more of the tree the tree is now a twin trunk tree with a primary branch or strong primary branch that originates very low from the primary( strongest) trunk. The second trunk in the design is not much to look at. It's very straight and needs a lot of back budding and training before you can see the tree for its full potential. Deciduous trees normally take longer than evergreens to style as you need to build the form and shape of the tree over a few years. Each year allowing the tree to recover before the next phase is implemented. There is also no foliage for you to hide bad structure or reverse taper behind. You can see the tree in it full naked form during the winter months so you need to make sure that all the branches on these trees are correctly placed and that no large cuts are visible.

Talking about cuts just a side note when working on deciduous trees please make sure that you seal all huge cuts with the correct paste or wound sealer. Trees like Celtis Africana dies back if the would is not sealed properly. If you use the wrong sealer the wound turns black and gets this mold like bacteria that builds up on the edge of the wound and take longer to heal over. This looks very bad and displeasing to the eye and takes a few seasons to disappear. If any one knows how to get rid of this faster please let me know.

This is a photo I took of the tree at an odd angle from the top. After I designed the first stage of this tree I pruned the branches that was at the wrong places and shorted the trunks of the tree so that they were all at different heights. This creates a more natural look. I tried adding in a few bends and turns to the trunk to add to the movement of the overall look. At this point in time it makes more sense to focus on the trunks and allow the branches time to develop.

Here you can see more of the branch placement and trunks in relation to the rest of the tree. A lot of the finer branches on this tree will be removed. As this is only phase one and I need the branches to help with the development of the tree. This takes me to the point of why I will not be repotting the tree now. If I allow the tree to develop for two to three growing seasons in this nursery bag I will get more growth on the tree instead of trying to repot now. If I repot now the tree will need to recover and only then can I start to develop the tree in which case I will almost certainly loss any chance of development over this growing season as I will have to let the tree grow out before I can work on it.

Just finished the one project and I already see the next one:

I need to remove these air layered trees from the main tree as the buds are starting to open up. Its best to do is now as the gowth is alraedy in the branches.

Hope you enjoyed the blog. Please feel free to leave your comments below.

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