Bonsai Art » Science

Leaves Give A Tree Strength

Adam — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:20:11 +0000

Leaves are there to build up a tree’s strength. Cut down a small sapling to below the leaves and chances are it will not survive. The leaves actually convert sunlight into sugars which can then be used to heal broken bark, grow extra roots and branches and generally get stronger.

Use leaves to help yamadori recover

With collected trees, you will most likely need to chop off a lot of the roots leaving very weak defenses. The best way to let the tree recover is to let it grow very bushy for the first year in the ground.

Less leaf growth shows a weak tree

Again the best way to let a tree recover is to let it grow on in the ground making sure it’s got water and not too much sun. Hopefully by letting it grow leaves naturally this way it will get back to health. But lack of leaf growth or brittle/wilted leaves definitely show an ill tree.

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Leaves are there to give the tree strength and you should not cut off too many or the tree will suffer.

Planting Bonsai in the Ground – Nature’s healer

Adam — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:19:25 +0000

Planting a bonsai tree in the ground is the best thing you can do for a sickly tree in a pot. fact.
I have tried many many different techniques but found this to be the best option for you if you think your tree is dead or has lost all it’s leaves.

If you have been reading the previous articles on the site you would have seen that I had a hawthorn and an oak that I thought were dead. I am pleased to say they are on their way to making good recoveries and are now looking nice and green. The only part which I am concerned might not have survived is the top of each tree. The new buds are opening halfway down the tree, this is usually a sign that above that part it has died.

Buds tend to open and grow first from the top of the tree. All the nutrients seem to be sent straight to the top first of all and work their way back down the tree slowly.

Collected trees should also go straight into the ground if you have space for them. It helps them to recover from the stressful move they have just gone through. As I pointed out on goarticles the other day it is totally unnatural for a tree to move! Place your yamadori in the ground for a year before it’s pot and it should recover nicely.

Differences In Rates Of Growth

Adam — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:11:20 +0000

I spotted a row of trees today which I was told had all been planted the same time. You would expect them to be more or less identical in height but these ones are all completely different to one another. What is more amazing is that these are Leylandii, which were planted some 10 years ago. Leylandii are renowned for their extremely fast growth of 1 meter (3.28 foot) a year!

It’s puzzled me a bit as to why there are all different sizes but they are planted in quite rocky and soil which is lacking in goodness. It was soil which was scooped out of deep in the ground and dumped to make a bank.

I may be completely wrong about it, but this is what I have come up with…

So there’s two factors as to why some are only 2 foot and their neighbours are up to 10 foot. The first is that theres not a lot of room for root growth which would stunt the growing of the main tree. The second is that they are not getting enough goodness to grow any bigger.

Which teaches us we should feed our bonsai regularly to ensure they grow and are healthy and also to not leave them in the same pot too long so that they slow down in growth that way.

Can Trees Reverse Global Warming?

Adam — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:57:34 +0000

Scientists are contemplating the idea that trees could start to reduce the effects of global warming. The extra CO2 in the air which trees and other plants depend on to survive could make them thrive even more and give out more oxygen than usual. This is by no way proven, but it is a theory nevertheless. The process that we’ve probably all heard about is photosynthesis. It is a fascinating process that plants have adopted and is the reason we are all here today.

The chemical equation for photosynthesis is:

6H₂O + 6CO₂ —-> C₆H₁₂O₆+ 6O₂

Very confusing for the average Joe like me who hasn’t got a degree in chemistry.Â What it means is that six molecules of water and six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar and six molecules of oxygen.

CouldÂ the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere be sucked up quicker than usual in trees and plants so that they can spew out extra oxygen and save the world?Â You decide.

Redwoods Like to Think Big

Adam — Tue, 22 May 2007 16:43:00 +0000

The redwood is the tallest tree on earth. Fact.

How do they grow to this enormous size? They think big! It sounds silly but everything about their structure is set up to be huge. I have a 1 year old tree (see below). The strange thing about it is that its tiny. You would expect a tree like a redwood to shoot up very quickly to gain great height. This is not the the case. This tree is slowly setting itself up to reach for the stars.

This small seedling that I have is only about 2 inches high. It’s taken a full year to get to this height. So why so long? Well it’s simply because it has a huge root. It has a single root which is 2 metres long. You heard correctly two metres long! I was quite shocked when I repotted it in the winter but it made perfect sense as to how the redwoods gain such heights.

If it was fully grown in the wild it would ‘hold hands’ with the other trees by wrapping the roots around other redwoods close by. This is how the redwoods grow up and stay up. I will write another post about fully grown redwoods soon.

A fascinating tree and the biggest mother nature gives us.

What’s the point of Grafting?

Adam — Sun, 13 May 2007 05:30:38 +0000

For a long time I wondered what the reason for grafting was. A sloppy graft seemed to be so disfiguring and pointless.
However a graft is used to gain the desired qualities of a specimen tree. If the specimen tree is very straight, has many leaves or is a beautiful colour a graft can be taken to replicate the tree’s qualities. A branch is cut off the specimen tree and attached to the roots of an average tree of the same species.
I have even seen a tree where they grafted two types of japanese maples together so that it had different colour leaves either side. This shows that the grafting technique is quite versatile as we do not need exactly the same type of tree.
There is still the fact that it makes a bit of an ugly mark on the tree itself but hopefully it should grow out in the process of time. Isn’t a mark on the trunk a small price to pay for a tree with the rest of the features being beautiful?

How trees grow – Part 7 (Branches & Trunk)

Adam — Fri, 11 May 2007 05:30:54 +0000

Suprisingly height growth in a tree does not occur from the ground. If you made a mark on the trunk of a tree it would remain in the same place for the life of the tree. The branches extend from the buds and exisiting branches only expand in diameter, they do not lengthen. The trunk expands in diameter each growing season outwards. If we look at a cut down tree we can see the rings of growth each year. Spring is the lightest colour to autumn which is the darker colour wood. On a year with worse weather or other conditions there will be a small ring, with good conditions a large ring.

Just underneath the bark is a layer called the phloem which transports sugars throughout the tree. The sugars are made from the leaves during photosynthesis and are vital for new growth. Under this part is the cambium layer which grows each year, adding new xylem to the inside and new phloem to the outside.

When the wood is created “pipes” are built into it known as xylem. These are the vessels that carry the water and nutrients through the plant. The xylem are the dead cells in the trunk which are used just for this purpose.
From the centre of trunk are:

1. Heartwood (xylem)
Oldest dead cells, less active for transport. Darker wood.

2. Sapwood (xylem)
Dead cells, most active for transport.

3. Cambium
Growing part of trunk, produces xylem to the inside and phloem to the outside.

4. Phloem
Transports sugars throughout the tree.

5. Outer bark
Protective layer

Part 6

How trees grow – Part 6 (Buds & Leaves)

Adam — Thu, 10 May 2007 05:30:32 +0000

Buds are the primary source of new growth for a tree. They are one of the only parts of the tree which contains meristems. Meristems are areas of intense cell activity. This enables it to focus all its growing efforts into the new leaves which appear from the buds.
Not all buds are active. There are some buds which are in a state of dormancy. These will stay dormant until needed. They are most obvious on oak trees which have a lot of buds that are not in use. As the tree grows it actually envelops the bud and covers it with bark so as when a branch dies or is cut off the dormant bud can be used immediately.
Leaves go through a process called photosynthesis (as i’m sure you learnt about in school!). They create sugars from carbon dioxide and disperse it throughout a layer just underneath the bark called the phloem. I will explain more about phloem tommorow.

Part five

Part seven

How trees grow – Part 5 (Roots)

Adam — Wed, 09 May 2007 05:30:14 +0000

Roots are the first thing to start growing in springtime. New fiborous roots start sprouting utilising the same meristems as buds. They grow from the tips of exisiting roots in the same sort of fashion as a branch. Roots on a tree do not necessarily go down very deep but in open land they can reach outwards as far as the tree’s height upwards. They are vitally important to a tree as they provide it with water and nutrients.

It is a myth that roots grow deep into the ground. A redwood’s roots for example travel hardly any distance deeply into the earth and focus all their energy and reaching outwards to interlock with other tree’s roots. The redwoods hold each other up in this fashion and with this combined strength can reach enormous proportions.

Part Four

Part Six

How trees grow – Part 4 (Rates of growth)

Adam — Tue, 08 May 2007 05:30:49 +0000

On different parts of the tree you can have different speeds of growth. Quite simply trees tend to grow more at the top than at the bottom.
Also they will grow much more in spring than in any other time of the year. They carry on growing in summer but to a slightly slower extent. They still grow in autumn but by then the growth has almost stopped completely to allow for sugar and energy storage . In winter the growth ceases until spring once more.

They can grow slower in harsh areas also such as mountains. Trees in wild areas like this are often much older for their size. For instance a two foot high tree could be as much as 50 years old because of the environment it lives in. Also in the welsh mountains sheep, deer and other animals eating the leaves might slow the growth considerably.

Part three

Part five