Bonsai Mauritius

xtolord

There will be a flower show at Cascavelle ( Flic-en-flac, Mauritius) this weekend : Blooming Day at Cascavelle ( 01 Aug as from 10:00 )
The orchid society will be displaying orchids as well as selling orchids there.

There will also be an ikebana display/section.

In addition Ashiq Boyjoo will be selling his hand made pots during the event.

I will be participating but not selling.
I'll display various trees in my collection, from prebonsai in late development stages to prebonsai in early development stages.

I will also be doing two introductory course on bonsai.
One from 11:00 - 12:00 & 14:00 -15:00 : Cours d'introduction sur les concepts de base de bonsaï
This should cover what is a bonsai, basic bonsai structures and basic stages in bonsai development.

The contents will be the same in both cases, just doing two to be able to reach a wider public.

Feel free to come over and say hi!

xtolord

In September there will be this year's Orchid Society of Mauritius's show.

Some of our bonsai members will be exposing their trees during there on the last day of that show.
I'm planning to display several trees and started prepare them two months beforehand.

Mame Cuphea
This little guy was entered in the last Ryuga 2013 online competition, together with a ficus and a miniature rose.
The link is here : Cuphea hyssopifolia false heather

At the end of last year it got badly hit by a heat wave. It loss its main leader and also several primary ramification structures.
Now I need to rebuild the whole ramification structures as well as rework the deadwoods.

Mame Ligustrum

This is a follow up on the ligustrum-003-progression
There has been some more growth in between and some wiring to reposition the various branches.
Right now its entering a new growth cycle and creating several buds. Some are already starting to develop.

If I leave it as it is, the stronger apical areas will get most of the growth and the inner structures will stay mostly underdevelopped.
So to encourage the tree to get new growth all over the place ( strong and weak areas ) I went ahead and fully defoliated the lil guy.
I'm also aiming to get a new set of smaller leaves for the September expo.
In a few weeks I'm expecting to get lots of smaller leaves all over the place.

I also went along a treated the deadwood with some lime sulphur.
In a few weeks later I'll treat it with some wood hardener.

Malpighia coccigera

Also did a quick cleanup on this singapore holly and added some rougth guy wires to reposition some branches.

xtolord

Part I here

Last weekend we had our first informal bonsai meeting at Hem's place.

It was not something that was planned, I was just going there for a quick "Hello" and ended up with a 6 hr informal bonsai meeting, where we worked mainly on Jeanluc's plants.

Well this meeting was unplanned and we did not took any pictures methodologically but mostly randomly.

Yamadori Goyava : Carving

I think the most interesting material for me was this yamadori goyava belonging to Jeanluc Essoo.

Here's a little evolution of the tree since it was collected, courtesy of owner ( Jeanluc ).

Originally that material was not meant to be worked, but a section of deadwood caught my eye and I decided to work on it.

I think it has a huge potential to become an outstanding goyava shohin if Jeanluc managed to nudge it in the right direction over the coming years.

Old front - I think the left side should be the new front in the long run.

The section of deadwood that caught my eye. The old cambium was still on the
tree and it was keeping moisture trapped underneath which in turn will cause the wood to rot faster.
Another issue arising here, the two dead branch touching, one needs to go or get reduced.

Decided to keep the lower branch but to reduce its diameter.

We did not do a full work on it - time was short.
It definitely needs 1 or 2 other sessions done on it.

Trying out some Lime Sulphur

We used the newly created deadwood to test some lime sulphur (or lime sulfur ) and see how it reacted.

This was purely for experimentation.

For info that dead branch was already dry and lifeless, on a fresh green carved branch I usually prefer to let it get weathered down first ( even if its not strictly necessary ).

Ended the session on a quick "How to unwire" course :)

There were some wires on the upper branches. The tree was starting to grow into those wires, and it was more than time to remove them. We ended the session by going through the basic notions on removing wires on the branches : when and how to safely unwire by hand, how to cut wires instead of removing by hand and where to cut wires partially.

Hem and Jeanluc in the process of identifying areas to unwire

Jeanluc cutting the wires

Part I here

xtolord

The winners of the 2nd ofBonsai Magazine Progressive Styling Contest sponsored by RYUGA Bonsai Tools and International Bonsai Magazine have finally been announced today here : http://ofbonsai.org/contest/2nd-ryuga-contest-winners-are

[ OfBonsai is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance. If the links do not work, please try again later or at a later date. ]

I had three entries for this contest :

A miniature rose
A cuphea
A ficus benjamina

My Rose entry was awarded "Most Original Design Award"

Here's a quick before / after of those three entries.

Rose entry:

Common Name: Miniature rose
Latin Name: Rosa chinensis ‘Minima’
Contest page: http://ofbonsai.org/contest/entry-rosa-chinensis-minima-miniature-rose-mauritius

Initial material : Acquired ( from a cutting apparently )
Training (Time frame) : August 2014 - April 2014 ( roughly 8 months training)
Current status : Still a prebonsai - The fact that I went for a kengai ( cascade ) style requires more attention because the rose has an apical dominance, it naturally gives more energy to the topmost area. I need for the next year or so to force the energy to go toward the lower areas and encourage sacrificial branches to thicken up those lower areas.

Before:

After:

Cuphea entry:

Common Name: False Heather
Latin Name: Cuphea hyssopifolia
Contest page: http://ofbonsai.org/contest/entry-cuphea-hyssopifolia-false-heather-mauritius

Initial material : Nursery plant from Vaneron Garden
Training (Time frame) : July 2014 - April 2014 ( roughly 10 months training)
Current status : Personally for me its still a prebonsai - It still needs some work done on it, the back side specially needs to be developped, as well as the apex.

Before:

After:

A mini vid taken in Jan 2014 (3 months before final submission)

Ficus entry:

Common Name: Weeping Fig
Latin Name: Ficus Benjamina
Contest page: http://ofbonsai.org/contest/entry-ficus-benjamina-weeping-fig-mauritius

Initial material : Acquired at a plant fair
Training (Time frame) : August 2014 - April 2014 ( roughly 8 months training)
Current status : This entry is the one that has evolved the least. Because of the strong bend that I made I decided to go slowly with this material. There's still a long way to go!

Before:

Technical planning:

What I have in mind for the final design of the tree. The blue extensions are sacrificial branches with potential to become jins in the future, or to be completely removed.

The main challenge in this design was the extreme bend, and reducing the foliage closer to the main trunk.

I decided to start with the bend first, and allow the plant to recuperate before attempting to work on the foliage. As such the final submission for this entry is not as interesting or appealing as it should be.

After:

Final submitted picture: Nothing remotely close to my initial design, but I have to go through this step before I can achieve my goal.

xtolord

Follow up on my first Cuphea attempt.
Part I : http://maubonsai.blogspot.com/2012/08/cuphea-001-attempting-aerial-roots.html

Cuphea is very slow to thicken up or bulk up its trunk.
It tends to throw long shoots but the main trunk just does not follow up in terms of thickening up as does other plants or shrubs.

In part I, I tried to encourage aerial roots to grow from the lower section of the trunk by applying some generous amount of sphagnum moss in the areas where I wanted the roots to appear.

Once there was a generous amount of roots coming out of the sphagnum moss, I went ahead and removed the sphagnum moss. Then rearranged the branches and also started on the ramification process.

Cuphea Material