Quiet Crow Bonsai

Project

Cascade Hornbeam

Carpinus tschonoskii Native to Korea. For the last 20 years, Korea exported a lot of these trees collected from the forest. It is now very hard to import trees from Korea since they want to protect their native stock. The leaves are rather small and they adapt very well to bonsai techniques. It is the fastest growing carpinus species preferred for bonsai. The leaves will either be red, yellow or orange in fall. Sometimes, color can vary for leaves on same branch. Hornbeams yield a very hard timber, giving rise to the name Ironwood.

This tree was started from seed that was imported from Korea about five years before the a forest workshop in 1997.

The original workshop with Brussel Martin was a seven tree grove. We root and top trimmed heavily before planting on slab. The Workshop included trees, soil and slab all from Brussels. It was a really nice value and the grove looked quite nice.

In the year 2000 the grove did not bud as expected. In July, two trees finally started to bud and began to grow. In September, rather than try to over winter as I had been, I moved the the grove to the ground in an effort to give them a shot at surviving.

In 2008 I dug up the three remaining trees and planted them into training pots. This tree is the only survivor from Grove. And as the only surviving tree, in 2009, I styled it to reflects this hard fought battle with a semi-cascade appearance and significant lean. I added this unique orange pot to the compisition in 2012. Where later that year it was in the club show as part of a shoin display judged by Peter Tea. The composition took second place and Peter explained that he felt the pots in the display were too contrasting.