Japanese WHite Pine Bonsai Tree
This video shows a beautiful Japanese White Pine bonsai tree imported from Japan. This tree is very old and grafted onto a black pine base. We have just had a top UK professional re-wire this tree and the tree is really coming along nicely.
This is a large tree as you can see from the coke can scale in the video.
Japanese white pines are tricky trees and we have a love hate relationship with them. If you have a non grafted White Pine bonsai tree, then chances are it may sulk in the UK climate. The grafted pines on the other hand do very well in the UK and seem to go from strength to strength with good growth each year.
We love the fact that White Pines will look great all year round, and look nice with a sprinkling of snow on them. We try to avoid letting the roots get saturated with water during the winter as this can cause them to rot and will weaken the immune system of the tree, resulting in poor growth during the growing season.
White Pines are not the easiest of trees to look after and are not the hardest at the same time. They are drought tolerant meaning that when you go away on holiday you do not need to worry too much about the watering of them, especially when they are this size and in a large pot. Re-potting white pines is not that hard so long as you make sure you do not cut too much of the roots off. If a White Pine is heavily pruned it may sulk or die. When you re-pot your White Pine you will see some white mold in the roots and this is a good thing. Try to keep as much of it as possible and mix it into any new soil that you add.
Pinching White Pines is a learned skill and the goal is to leave enough of the bud that you will get good healthy growth. Bud selection is also important and often the inner strongest bud will be removed, so that the weaker buds will benefit from the energy supply the tree is providing to the particular branch. White Pines have that lovely gnarly look to them especially on the trunk, and this really helps to give the visual impact of a wise old tree. You may find that your White Pine starts to lose a branch through die off and this is usually nothing to worry about. Pines grow this way and it is just part of bonsai keeping. It can be very frustrating to see an important branch die, but this is how they grow. If you do have a branch die you will then need to restyle the tree to bring back any balance lost.
We currently have a White Pine slightly older than this one aged around 90 years, and it is crazy to think how much care will have been given over the years to keep such an old tree alive. This is where bonsai does not make sense, because a buyer will want to pay as little as possible for a tree, but how do you put a price on a 90 year old tree that has been cared for by generations of people. Essentially with bonsai you are paying for time, and when you understand this principle, the price of trees starts to make a little more sense.
Quite often in Japan nurseries will buy trees from auctions where a family is selling a tree that has been kept by someone in the family who may have passed away. So a 90 year old tree may have only been with the Japanese Nursery for a few years and does not mean that the nursery has looked after it for 90 years. The auctions can bring the price of valuable trees down to a reasonable level because families are simply wanting to get rid of them.
Age is not always the most important factor when putting a price on a tree, it is just one of them.
This is a large tree as you can see from the coke can scale in the video.
Japanese white pines are tricky trees and we have a love hate relationship with them. If you have a non grafted White Pine bonsai tree, then chances are it may sulk in the UK climate. The grafted pines on the other hand do very well in the UK and seem to go from strength to strength with good growth each year.
We love the fact that White Pines will look great all year round, and look nice with a sprinkling of snow on them. We try to avoid letting the roots get saturated with water during the winter as this can cause them to rot and will weaken the immune system of the tree, resulting in poor growth during the growing season.
White Pines are not the easiest of trees to look after and are not the hardest at the same time. They are drought tolerant meaning that when you go away on holiday you do not need to worry too much about the watering of them, especially when they are this size and in a large pot. Re-potting white pines is not that hard so long as you make sure you do not cut too much of the roots off. If a White Pine is heavily pruned it may sulk or die. When you re-pot your White Pine you will see some white mold in the roots and this is a good thing. Try to keep as much of it as possible and mix it into any new soil that you add.
Pinching White Pines is a learned skill and the goal is to leave enough of the bud that you will get good healthy growth. Bud selection is also important and often the inner strongest bud will be removed, so that the weaker buds will benefit from the energy supply the tree is providing to the particular branch. White Pines have that lovely gnarly look to them especially on the trunk, and this really helps to give the visual impact of a wise old tree. You may find that your White Pine starts to lose a branch through die off and this is usually nothing to worry about. Pines grow this way and it is just part of bonsai keeping. It can be very frustrating to see an important branch die, but this is how they grow. If you do have a branch die you will then need to restyle the tree to bring back any balance lost.
We currently have a White Pine slightly older than this one aged around 90 years, and it is crazy to think how much care will have been given over the years to keep such an old tree alive. This is where bonsai does not make sense, because a buyer will want to pay as little as possible for a tree, but how do you put a price on a 90 year old tree that has been cared for by generations of people. Essentially with bonsai you are paying for time, and when you understand this principle, the price of trees starts to make a little more sense.
Quite often in Japan nurseries will buy trees from auctions where a family is selling a tree that has been kept by someone in the family who may have passed away. So a 90 year old tree may have only been with the Japanese Nursery for a few years and does not mean that the nursery has looked after it for 90 years. The auctions can bring the price of valuable trees down to a reasonable level because families are simply wanting to get rid of them.
Age is not always the most important factor when putting a price on a tree, it is just one of them.