Quick blog: winged elm

Ima just gonna put this here for posterity.

Root graft on an Ulmus alata, the winged elm. Here in the South they call them “Wanged elms”.

A yamadori (or flori-dori, since a yamadori is technically a tree collected in the mountains and we don’t have mountains in Floriduh…..heh heh, flori-dori…I like that) collected by, believe it or not, The Buttonwood Queen, herself (no doubt) Mrs. Mary Madison (I got it on this visit to Mary’s).

The main three roots are odd, long and tubular (make your own joke and insert it here….) without taper (taper, there’s that word again, one of the more important words in bonsai) and without ramification (that word again too!).

Yes, roots need taper and ramification.

I cut a channel in the base trees root, shaved the root (called the scion, in which this case, a root cutting off another winged elm) and matched up the cambium layers. Tied it tight with wire, sealed it with a wax based grafting goo, and hopefully it takes.

I’ll let the root cutting sprout new growth (as they’re prone to do), grow long and wild, when they’re attached well, shave down the top of the root cutting scion and hopefully it’ll blend.

As you can see, the tree is worth going to these heroic measures for, and not just calling it in by covering the roots with moss when it’s time to show.

And that’s about as quick as a blog as it gets.