This is a topic on which I did not elaborate in the manual I wrote, Bald Cypress as Bonsai: Course Manual. I think now is a good time to talk about it, since I defoliated a large cypress a few weeks ago. I think it important to talk about the purpose of defoliation as well as the purpose of bud pinching as they relate to bald cypress. It is not my intent to provide an in-depth article on defoliation and/or bud pinching. I will simply provide some basic guidelines and practices so that you have a clear understanding of the process. My reason for writing this is to help those who grow bald cypress as bonsai to understand when each technique is appropriate to use.

At the August GNOBS Annual Auction in 2014, I happened to notice a Chinese elm in a rather large 15 gallon nursery pot. It stood about 5 feet tall in the pot and had never been worked as a bonsai. It was just a large nursery tree, with no branches until about three feet up the trunk. It had a decent sized diameter trunk, but more importantly, it had great radial roots. I thought it would make a great broom-style bonsai. And I liked the size of the trunk as it was, so the” growth-for-size” stage had already been done.

The American Elm (Ulmus americana), also called White Elm, is a deciduous tree that can grow up to 90 feet tall. In Louisiana, it is typically found growing in swamps and bottomland forests. It prefers soils that are extremely rich in organic matter and if provided that type of soil, can be found growing at higher elevations, provided it can get enough moisture.