Yamadori Colorado Blue Spruce

I collected this tree in 1999, by permit in a National Forest, with some friends from the Bonsai Society of Greater Kansas City. We were nearly finished for the day, and were driving farther into the forest to find a place to turn around. As we drove by, I had to beg Gerard to stop and let me collect this one. As it was, he did as much of the work as I did. It's still my tree. Don't ask.

The bark was old, and the tree hadn't gained much size over the years. The only difficult part was that a major root ran up the hill for quite a way. We had to cut it off.

I came back and immediately cleaned up the cut root, and planted the whole thing in the garden. I did not know how to care for it, and although as a result it grew much taller than I would have liked, the tree survived and acclimated very well to our climate. The photo below shows the tree in May 2005, before our move, and the first time I had potted it up. It's the largest pot I had. Now I wish I had built a box for it, and had some help with the potting.


A detail of the bark. It has plated up extremely well over the last few years.

At some point in its past, some hiker had cut this tree off about 18 inches from the ground. The new leader was just and adventitious bud that went straight up from there. In spring 2007, I entered this tree in the KOB (Knowledge of Bonsai) styling contest. I had to withdraw it because it began to get hot very early this spring. Here are the front, back, and side photos before any work was done.

The front view shows the original jin with a new one to the right. the large mass of foliage at lower left is a back branch of large proportion.



It is easy to see from the lanky growth that this tree has never been pinched. I had also never cut back any part of it. It's difficult to see the exact growth pattern with so much foliage, but all the branches except the back branch grow in the same plane as the bends in the trunk. In other words, it's completely two-dimensional! In addition, the back branch grew in an odd circular fashion that brought the foliage back to the trunk. I will follow this post with the work done on the tree very soon.