Japanese Black Pine (Informal Upright Style) 2002

This japanese black pine came from one of the first private collections i bought in 2002. it was already fully wired at the time and looked rather impressive. however, it was never really heathy, needles are always slightly yellowish and it’s never budded vigourously with strong new growth. so it was kind of left aside untouched for quite some time, until now(04/01/2014).

Not knowing what i was aiming to accomplish because i was happy with its original design. so i just started wiring, trying to tidy up the wild unattended branches into some sort of order.

As the wiring progressed, i soon realized a couple of issues with the tree.

First was, all but except the first branch, have pushed themselves upward or were not brought down from the beginning. the second issue was that the upper portion of the trunk had grown too tall for my liking. it was either cut it and replace with a new top, or some significant bending to bring the height down. well, i chose the latter.

Before any work

Three Lower branches wired and arranged into position

A thick branch was undercut with a saw to facilitate the downward angle

The cut was applied with cut paste to protect the wound

This is a technique that i have tried with great success. what it does is, it removes the exccess hardwood that is in the way of the downward bend, resulting in a neater and cleaner angle. had i tried to push it down without the undercut, the upper portion of the branch tends to crack open, resulting in larger scar.

The upper portion of the trunk was wrapped in soft tyre tube in preparation of the bending it served the purpose of preventing the trunk from splitting and breaking during the significant bend.

A clamp was used to bend the trunk down and tied with wire into position

The result a 90 degree bend

What this does is, it shortened the height of the tree and it pushed the apex back towards the centre. i think it suits the style better because it is not a slanting tree where the apex moves away from the trunk.

Japanese Black Pine (Informal Upright Style) 2002