Weetrees Bunjin Competition

On the Weetrees forum there was proposed a Bunjin/Literati tree competition. Entrants had untill the 31st of September to enter a piece of material, which would then be worked on and developed into a literati style bonsai. Entrants would have from the 31st of September untill the 31st of December to work this material and then submit final shots of the tree, which would then be judged on by the forum members in terms of the finished result and how this was achieved from the starting stock. After searching in a couple of local garden centres, I couldn't find much suitable for the task. I eventually chose a small Cedrus Deodara "Feelin Blue", I chose this because I liked the foliage, and it looked to have fairly good small branching in place giving me more choice.

Here is the tree, as bought.

As you can see, it had a good amount of foliage. It already had this leaning over style which I thought could be encorporated into the final design. It would however need extensive styling to come near to constituting and bunjin style tree. Work at first was slow, I was unfamiliar with this species and have not owned any Cedrus before, so I did not want to make any obvious mistakes.

The first job was to clear out any foliage that would obviously play no role, any small twigs, and also have a little dig down at the base to see how deep it went. Whilst doing this I examined the substantial branches which were mainly at the top of the tree, to begin to decide what would stay and what would go. Next, on some of the branches I had decided would go, instead of removing them completely, I stripped them of foliage to later use them as jins.

The foliage was fairly sparse on the lower half of the tree and mainly consisted of a few very weak shoots. This was probably due to the bulk of the foliage up top drowning out all light for anything below. This unfortunately left a large area of trunk devoid of any interest either from branches, movement, or foliage itself. This was a problem. I decided to leave a low branch on and make a jin out of it for now, just so there was something in that area.

The stripped branches were then cut roughly to the length I wanted them as jins, and I begun to strip the bark off them to reveal the wood below. I have never done any sort of deadwood or jins before and so this was a new skill to try out. The branches I was using were quite small so this kept the task simple for now. Also the bark was fresh and came away from the wood quite easily with a little help. Here are the jins freshly stripped with a little wire to shape them while they dry.


















After this stage I had to make a choice on which branches would be kept and used at the top, and which would go. What I had left was basically three branches. I had two at the very top, and one slightly lower down pointing towards the back.

The two top branches can be seen from this picture. My problem was that both branches originated from the same spot on the top of the trunk, this meant that if both were left on, swelling would occur around that point on the trunk and cause ugly inverse taper. So one had to go. If I chose to keep the red circled branch, it would currently be pointing forwards which wouldn't look right. So I decided to go with the blue circled branch and go and remove the other. I figured I had to keep the lower down branch to add a bit of balance and depth to the design.

So this done, the two remaining branches were trimmed roughly to the size I wanted, and some wire applied. The jins had also had chance to dry out and set in place. So the wire was removed and the jins applied with lime sulphur to give them a aged white look. Again, another procedure I was doing for the first time, and boy does it smell!

Now, all that was left was to give it a new pot and some minor tweaks and refinement to the pads of foliage. I was unhappy with the two upper jins so these also got shortened at this point. Most trees are usually repotted in the Spring, but it is fine to repot a lot of evergreen species in Autumn time.






This is how it looks now, it will be left to settle in for a while now. I have over a month untill the competition ends to make any minor tweaks or take more photos but it will probably stay the same as it is here. Next year it will be allowed to grow and hopefully I can gain some nice compact foliage in the pads and develop them further. Looking now, it could also be slight rotated clockwise in a future repot.

From this process I have been able to try out some new techniques, gain more practice in evaluating and styling trees, and gain more experience in techniques I am already accustomed with. Overall I have enjoyed the journey from the raw stock, and this is what we do this hobby for. Whether or not you end up with a show stopping piece (in my case not even nearly lol) is irrelevant.

You can follow this tree and all of the other entrants into the competition at the WeeTrees Bonsai Forum