I bought a group of 5 toothpick thick cuttings in a 3" pot a long time ago. I fussed around with them, twisting them together in something like a braid or plait, and they inosculated (approach grafted to each other). I ended up with perhaps the ugliest piece of vegetation I've ever seen.

See what I mean?

I let it grow, kept looking at it to try to find a believable tree in it, and couldn't, so I pruned it every year so it was manageable and kept looking at it.

Several years later (last summer). I finally saw something and really whacked it hard. I wish I had taken a 'before' picture, but this is after:

It actually has most of the attributes required of a good bonsai. The pic above was taken 8/21/4, about a month after I defoliated it completely and did hard work on it. I had repotted it in Jun and wanted it to recover before the hard work.

I let it grow, mostly indoors, until this June, when it looked like this:

I completely defoliated it:

The pruned and wired the basic branches

Now it's starting to look like a tree instead of something from The Little Shop of Horrors.

I was referring to your tree when I said it COULD be a bonsai, but I wasn't suggesting you should consider that as its destiny - only making the point that there is an extremely high probability that a tree that large in a pot could easily be reduced above and below ground and grown in a small pot. FLFs have a leaf too large to be believable as bonsai trees. It's important the leaf is reasonably in scale to tree size. My trees are just houseplants that live outdoors in the summer and plants I've learned to manipulate.

Talking about VISION ...... I was in Indianapolis for a bonsai convention last weekend. The headliner was an artist named Suthin Sukosolvisit (Sue` - tin ..... that's the way HE says it, but I don't think he pronounces it right). ;-) I have a before & after picture of a multi-trunked boulevard cypress he worked on that are amazing, but they're on my phone & somehow I can't manage to email then so I can download to the puter. I'll try to access and send here from phone. BRB

.... Hope it worked. Hey! How about that! Hard to believe it's the same tree - no? It'll take 2 years to get the roots situated so it can go in a semi-cascade pot, but during that time, the tree can continue to be refined.

.... wish the pictures were better. Any questions about your tree?

Al

Al

Thank you for posting - I don't remember seeing first 2 photos...

What a tree! I think it has 'character"(???) to begin with. That is what my tree is lacking. Not that I would have vision even if it had some character :)

The photos from the convention show a tree with (what I call) a character - maybe better word would be interest? The final result (may not be final - but you know what I mean), is amazing and very slightly helped by some interesting features in both cases; my tree is just a straight trunk that splits in 2 main branches and then into more and more branches. No twists, interesting trunks and so on.

I'll have to take some photos to show you - it could be few days before I am able to.

I made some mistakes when chopping off few branches and trying to 'clean' the wounds - I use the glue over them, I guess I put too much or something similar - they healed, but look ugly (dark, almost black - again need to get photos). I did that with new ones and many old ones that were on the tree when I got it. I have photo from before - the wounds are the same but much darker now.

(Still having problems with posting photos...)

here is the tree showing from before some of the wounds, and 2 main branches.

I'll try to get up to date pics.

I think I should have shorten just about every branch, down to just few leaves - is that right?

Is it too late this year to do some pruning?

Rina

You can still do some medium heavy pruning if you want. Serious work should wait until next year, probably. I can't tell much from the picture, other than your tree probably wants to be a single trunk or if you're really daring, a semi cascade. For the sake of appearance, it would be best if you got rid of the slingshot look. You might be able to pull something off by shortening the branch on the left quite a bit, then treating both trunks like they're individual trees. I'm rehabbing someone's Ficus right now (much smaller than yours) and it WILL NOT backbud low on the tree, so I'm pulling a high branch way down and building a tree at the end of the branch to compliment the main tree that will be a foot or so above the other. ..... hard to envision. I'll watch for your other pics.

Al