Newsletter

February 2018

Ross Clark, editor

Articles in this newsletter are the intellectual property of the authors. If information or ideas are excerpted, paraphrased or duplicated in any way,

proper credit must be given to the originator. Authors of articles published here also are expected to respect intellectual property rights. The American

Bonsai Society is not responsible or liable for opinions expressed by contributors to this newsletter. Photos are by the editor unless otherwise indicated.

What’s this? - another editor? Yes, it is. I am Ross Clark, a retired botany professor in Richmond, Kentucky. My fascination with plants, especially woody ones, began in early childhood. And I’m still learning about them. I also was interested in bonsai from an early age, but there was no opportunity for that interest to come alive for decades. Fortunately, I was drawn into Ivan Watters’ bonsai orbit near Chicago in the 1980s. ‘Most anything else you might be curious about concerning me can be found on LinkedIn. So, what’s the function of a newsletter? I can think of three important ones; maybe you can think of others. A most basic func-tion of all newsletters I’ve seen is to keep people informed of events and opportunities that are scheduled in the near future. For us, that might be regional exhibits that are scheduled around the country. A second important thing many newsletters do is to serve as a vehicle for articles of interest to subscribers which might not meet the more formal criteria or length expected of manu-scripts submitted to journals. And a third common function for a newsletter is to serve as a forum for discussion of various topics. I’d like for the ABS newsletter to address all of these functions. And please, be quick to suggest other goals if I’ve overlooked them. Fundamentally though, this is your newsletter. What it does and where it goes will depend on the importance, attention and sup-port you give it. In my view, what is a newsletter editor supposed to do? Well, the editor certainly is expected to produce a product that is timely, accurate and interesting. Along that line, you’ll probably be pleased, as I was very much, that Andy Smith has offered to continue contributing articles for our newsletter. I also will contribute some material. And my hope is that others will contribute, more so than in the past. Many of our members are extremely knowledgeable on specific subjects. I sincerely hope, when I begin to ask some of you to contribute articles on specific subjects, that you will not turn me down. And that brings me to another observation: I feel that the most important editorial job of all is to be an invisible hand that helps others express themselves better. It’s a com-monly repeated observation that behind every excellent book is a good editor. That’s what I’ll try to do. If you send me material, I intend to edit with a light hand, but a careful hand. The ABS has a worldwide reach. People in other countries read our publications and are interested in our activities. Everyone who reads or accesses our information de-serves quality, not just in our doing and promoting bonsai, but also everything we say and how we say it about bonsai. We are all ambassadors for bonsai, not for ourselves. I’m excited at this opportunity to serve you, ABS and bonsai! Please send me your ideas, suggestions, criticisms, and what’s going on in your neck of the woods. Finally, many thanks!! to Barbara Bogan for designing the classy masthead of this newsletter.

At your service, Ross

That’s why they

call them golden

larches.

(Pseudolarix, last

fall)

IN THIS ISSUE: Announcements and ABS business 2-3 Winter, Water, White (Andrew Smith) 3 A Little Winter Sunshine (Ross Clark) 5 Seasonal Considerations (Ross Clark) 6 Special Educational Opportunities 7 Please address all newsletter correspondence and submissions to ross.clark@eku.edu. Thanks! The deadline for submissions for the March 2018 issue of this newsletter is Tuesday, February 20, 2018. This newsletter is being sent to you as a benefit of your membership in the American Bonsai Society.

Gateway to Bonsai—2018

April 19-22, 2018

Presented by American Bonsai Society and Bonsai Society of Greater St. Louis

Gateway Convention Center

Collinsville, IL ( 10 minutes east of St Louis)

Easy access from St Louis airport to the Convention Center with ample parking

For more information and on-line registration, go to www.absbonsai.org

3 GREAT Headliners!! Marc Noelanders, Bjorn Bjorholm, and Matt Reel

20 Workshops, 17 Seminars, 3 Critiques, and Vendors galore

Ikebana Display and Workshop

Some workshops are filled, so register quickly.

Juried bonsai exhibit with awards and prize money, $1000.00 for Best in Show

2nd Place -$500, 3rd Place, $250, Best Conifer-$250, Best Shohin Display-$250,

Best Tropical-$250, Best Broadleaf-$250, Best Native Bonsai & ABS Medallion-$250,

Best Ikebana-$100

Call for Entries—entry forms and information sheet , www.absbonsai.org

Go to www.absbonsai.org. Go to "events", click on the gateway picture and a larger picture with clickable links will

appear. Click on "bonsai exhibitor entry form". Remember one form per tree display (shohin being ONE

display). Include a tree picture in jpeg format with your entry. Can be a separate file keyed to your entry form.

Email Your Entry to gatetobonsai2018@aol.com

Joshua Roth New Talent Contest—The Joshua Roth-American Bonsai Society New Talent Contest is in-

tended to recognize and promote new bonsai talent in North America.

The first stage of the competition requires each entrant to submit photographs of three trees they have personally de-

signed and styled. Those entrants selected will then be eligible to compete in the second stage, which consists of the

production of a bonsai from provided raw material, on Friday, April 20, 2018 during the ABS/BSGSL “Gateway to Bon-

sai” Convention being held at the Gateway Center, Collinsville, Il. For more information, go to www.absbonsai.org

ABS Bonsai Resource Directory - Updating We are in the process of updating the ABS Bonsai Resource Directory for 2018, which lists Bonsai vendors/businesses, instructors/artists, and bonsai arboretums/gardens. Instructors and arboretums are listed for free, businesses listed for only $25. If you own a bonsai business or are a bonsai instructor and would like to be listed, con-tact Barbara at abssecretary@frontier.com or call 812-922-5451.

Winter, Water, White by Andrew Smith

Water turns white in the winter, whenever the weather allows.

Willard was weary on Wednesday, so he wouldn’t water his cows.

The cows stampeded on Thursday, down to the lake for a drink.

But the lake was frozen like glass, so they skated around in the rink.

Some took up figure skating, and pirouetted around on the ice.

Others learned to play hockey, and I can tell you they didn’t play nice.

Willard was worried the weather would warm and the ice would melt through.

And his cattle might learn the backstroke, and escape back to Kalamazoo.

He said, “Wherever you wander, my wily bovines; remember this worthy advice:

Whether for drinking or weeping or washing, water is wonderfully nice.

It waters the willows of Western Wallonia, and pours from the Heavens above.

Like a balm, like a clear, sweet elixir; that allows us to live, laugh and love.”

As this classic, ancient haiku* clearly shows, bonsai would be impossible without water. Cattle and hockey sticks might

also be necessary, though that connection remains to be proven. But water we can be sure of.

Water flows like a river through everything living. We take it in and let it out again continuously. We exist on this tide and if either inflow or outflow stopped, so would we.

Our trees are the same. A river flows through them. They constantly pull water from the ground, up their trunk and into the foliage, and release it into the air. Eventually, it may fall down again as rain.

How much water do you think a single, small bonsai tree flows through its foliage in a year? If you figure you apply a half-gallon of water per tree, per day during the growing season, how much of that water is actually absorbed by the plant and transpired back into the atmosphere, and how much either runs through the pot or evaporates out of the soil before the tree can use it?

My guess is that the tree uses only a small part of the water that we give it. On a hot summer day, with a medium sized bonsai, I’d guess if you gave it a gallon of water it might use a pint. But that’s a guess.

I haven’t measured this, but I know that when I water trees before a show and then wrap the pots in plastic for travel, the soil almost always is still wet when I get home a week or more later, despite the minimal amount of water they get during the trip. This makes me think that soil typically dries out much faster from evaporation than from transpiration.

On the other hand, a full-sized forest pine tree does pull a significant amount of water out of the ground. I have heard, through the forest grapevine (which has an outpost in a bar down the road), that a mature pine can pull about 150 gal-lons of water out of the ground during a hot summer day. This amount seemed a bit exaggerated to me, but then I saw a research paper from the University of New Mexico that stated that a mature pecan tree could use as much as 250

Courtesy of gardeningknowhow.com

gallons of water on a hot day! Of course, that’s with unlimited water available, in a very hot, dry climate, so it’s proba-bly a maximum. But it’s still a lot.

Enhancing water production is one of the management goals of the Forest Service and I do know they will occasionally clear cut a mountain slope just to increase snowmelt and runoff to the watershed below. For the forest not only pulls water from the ground, it also stops rain and snow from ever reaching the ground. Much of the rain or snow that falls on a tree evaporates off the foliage before it can reach the ground and become available. In the winter the snow is al-ways piled up much deeper in meadows than it is under the trees.

In the winter, of course, trees, including our bonsai, don’t use much water. But they still use some, and I suspect poor winter watering habits have led to the demise of more than one fine old bonsai tree. Hence, over the years I have slow-ly increased the frequency of my winter watering.

If it’s cold enough that the soil in the pot is frozen hard, then I don’t water, don’t worry about it, and generally sleep the sleep of the blessed. Cold weather is not all bad.

But if it warms up enough so that the bonsai soil thaws, which it frequently does, on and off all winter; then I try and water at least once every two weeks. And if we have a real warm spell, which happens now and again, I’ll water once a week.

Also, I sadly realized that the environment in the greenhouses where I winter my trees is not perfectly consistent. Trees in certain corners of the greenhouses repeatedly suffer winter damage, year after year. I have discovered that these corners frequently had more winter sun exposure than most of the rest of the greenhouse, so trees in those corners might need more frequent watering than the rest of the trees. It took me a while to figure that out. In bonsai, the main thing is often just to pay attention and take nothing for granted.

But no matter how cold it gets, the flow of water through the tree never stops completely. Trees produce an anti-freeze like compound in their sap to keep it in liquid form. In the coldest part of the winter, when it’s regularly below zero outside, the tree sap may be thick, white, and almost the consistency of wax; but it still flows.

If we are out in the deep cold, drilling trees to take core samples in winter, the tree may be frozen so hard that we have to pound the borer bit into the frozen trunk with mallet to get it started. The tree may be frozen solid all the way through, even hard enough to occasionally break the hardened steel bit. But there is always sap flow. In fact, it’s more noticeable when it’s really cold than at any other time. It’s water, and it never stops moving.

Water turns white in the winter, and drifts down on the world far below

The wind brings us magic crystals, that in spring make everything grow!

Trapped in the sap.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Trees in a winter mulch bed

* No comments, please, from

those of you who have studied

ancient haiku . . . —ed.

A Little Winter Sunshine by Ross Clark

Without energy, there is no life. It is what keeps living systems organized. So it’s no surprise that the most basic adap-tations of organisms relate to being connected to energy sources, using energy efficiently, storing it in various ways (mainly but not always as starch in plants), and conserving it. Leaves are the most obvious way that plants are related to energy. As we all know, they capture energy from the sun. Young leaves, fully charged with pigments, are the most efficient. As leaves age, ultraviolet light and other factors take their toll on leaves and make them less efficient. It takes energy to maintain leaves. When leaves lose efficiency and don’t produce more energy than they use, they are shed by plants. Broadleaved evergreen trees (flowering plants) dominate the tropics, but in general as you go northward from the Equator there are fewer and fewer broadleaf evergreen native tree species. This is also obvious in various genera, such as oaks and hollies: most of the southern species are evergreen and the more northern ones are deciduous. The reason for this is that when temperatures are low and days are short, it costs plants more energy to maintain the leaves than the leaves capture. And that’s in addition to the fact that plants can’t supply water to leaves when soil is frozen. So, in a manner of speaking, if the leaves aren’t pulling their weight, then they gotta’ go. (Some broadleaved plants deal with winter by having leaves which resist or tolerate extreme dehydration, but that’s another story.) Winters in many parts of North America are harsher than the winters that some popular broadleaved bonsai are

adapted to. For that reason, we often winter them indoors. Satsuki azaleas are a prime example. The somewhat elevat-

ed temperatures of, say, an unheated garage, coupled with lack of exposure to sunlight means that leaves must be

maintained with stored food. That’s why there is usually considerable defoliation of satsukis during the winter. (Note

that these leaves are lost from the bottom up, oldest and least efficient first.)

Since the leaves on a broadleaved plant wintered indoors are a continual drain on the plant during the winter, satsukis

and other broadleaved evergreens will benefit from any winter sunlight they receive. So, once in a while in winter when temperatures are around 40oF or above, it is good to give them time out in the sunshine. When the bottom line is energy, every little bit more helps. Direct sun is not a problem at relatively low temperatures. The photo below (left) shows some plants benefitting from the short two-day break we had recently in Kentucky from sub-freezing weather.

A recent day in the sun (January 10)

OK you guys, it’s back into the salt mines of a

cluttered garage. (January 12)

Seasonal Considerations During the last calendar year we’ve seen weather extremes that have been hard on people. They’ve also been hard on bonsai. Unprecedented heat in the Pacific Northwest, fires, floods, mud slides, extremes of drought or its opposite and unseasonal temperature extremes — we’ve seen these things and more. As climatologists predicted all the way back in the 1980s, a warming global climate is bringing more variable and unpredictable weather. And a sobering thought is, this is probably only the beginning. We no longer can count on things being fairly predictable from one year to the next. And that means, as horticultural specialists, we must be on our toes. For that reason, from time to time, I will include information on what is happening or predicted to happen. I hope that will help bonsai people to plan ahead. A month or two ago, NOAA (The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; your taxes at work) pub-

lished the map below, putting its winter prediction in context. We hear about El Niño and La Niña all the time, but

the dots aren’t usually as connected as they are in this map (below). This is what La Niña looks like this winter, a

warmer and more moist western Equatorial Pacific and cooler than normal Equatorial eastern Pacific. Since the weath-er in our part of the Northern Hemisphere moves basically from west to east, it is easy to see where most of the mois-ture in northwestern North America is coming from. And as all that hot moist air moves northeastward, it is deforming the path of the polar jet stream, which is making it flow in a more northwest to southeast pathway. And that’s been like a conveyor belt, dumping one huge cold air mass after another into the central and eastern U.S. (The western sides of those huge air masses often produce Santa Ana winds in our Southwest.) —ed.

By contrast, the map at right shows the status of the Pacific Ocean in Jan. 2016, with

strong El Niño conditions. Hotter than normal sea surface conditions are yellow to red;

cooler than normal surface temperatures are blue. Note the huge streak of relatively

hot water along the Equator in the eastern Pacific. Hotter surface water produces more

evaporation, which eventually comes down as more rain or snow or . . . (Courtesy of NOAA)

The future ain’t what is used to be. And furthermore, it never was.

— Lee Hays

New Addition to the ABS Book Service:

The Why, What and How of Bonsai Soil by Dr. Brian Heltsley, Ithaca, New York Price $13.95 Bonsai growing media must encourage and support a highly ramified network of fine roots in a very small vol-ume. This booklet takes a novel approach to achieving that goal, bypassing the usual squabbling over “best” recipes. It explains how to quantitatively characterize any soil mix with simple measurements that anyone can perform. Ingredient selection can be consciously tuned for water retention, air flow, density, and cost. Easy to follow instructions empower hobbyists and professionals alike to develop and refine soils that meet their indi-vidual needs.

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