Here are a few more current photos:

Nicely done. I am tempted to try to same with my Coleus which is currently just growing in a pot.

I have a Persian Shield that I am also experimenting with. The PS will probably be a bonsai by next summer.

The advantages of these plants (especially for a beginner) are they respond well/quickly to pruning, and grow fast. I have been rooting the Persian Shield cuttings in water and starting new plants to play with and gift to friends. I haven't tried this with the Coleus (I have too many plants as is!) but I'm sure they would also root in water.

Nice! having fast growers will provide pruning practice in a short time without risking expensive pre bonsai material.

I yanked a volunteer Rose of Sharon out of my yard 2 weeks ago and potted it. I didn't suspect it would live because they have long taproots and it lost most of the roots when I chopped it off, but it's still going. No new growth, but no die off either.

I am trying to do a Thai basil bonsai since I found out it over winters nicely (unlike regular Italian basil). It grows fast too and takes pruning very well. Leaf size reduce too.

Rose of Sharon is very hardy plant. I yanked a few out last spring with barely any roots and they had no problems growing and flowering. They do have a tendency to produce branches randomly from near the base. Have to keep them pruned.

One difficulty with Coleus, is that it never really develops a woody ‘trunk’, or stem, and that, as a perennial, it has a tendency to deteriorate with age (after the first year). It is ok for practice, but don’t plan on having it for an extended period of time- for more than a year or two.

Those are amazing bonsai applications- (there should be a name for bonsai styling of nontraditional plants). How old are those well-developed specimens?

I don't know ...... maybe 3, 4 years.

A just for fun ^^ Shimpaku cutting. Photo only a day or few old.

Al

It already has good ramification, for a cutting- the size of the pot will allow the trunk to thicken, right?

Very nice bonsai Al. Do you have any bonsai that do not have a single trunk, but rather have multiple trunks that all start near the soil? I have a vision for my Coleus (and my Persian Shield eventually) but am wondering if you can give me some visual examples or suggestions.....

A palmatum mother/daughter ^

Young ^ Ficus retusa "Melon Seed" clump/grove, the beginning of an outline. This tree is a wild back-budder. If you like pruning, this is the tree
for you. It tends toward foliage so light green it looks unhealthy,
though. I'm having some success with keeping it green by fertilizing heavily and using Sprint 138 (an iron chelate) for high pH applications.

Young Ficus retusa ^ twin trunk. Needs pruning and rewiring. I'll take the old wire off before I move it in for the winter. I'll let it grow w/o pruning all winter. In spring, I'll prune it hard - back to the last leaf on each branch. Even though you can't see it in 2D, the branch arrangement/placement on all these trees is very good. This was a cookie cutter imported tree no one wanted from a club workshop. Same tree below

Japanese weeping willow ^ - just getting a start. Again, it's late in the summer & I don't prune temperate trees after the first week of Aug. It's still in early stages of development.

Shimpaku ^ a good start on a sinuous twin trunk - hard to see the trunk line, though.

^ Another F retusa "Melon Seed", a 2 year old cutting, recently pruned/wired.

A raft planting ^ of Grewia occidentalis (lavender star flower tree). It's just getting started from a branch cutting I took this spring. This is a really good tree to work with. It has very small leaves, short internodes, and back-buds reliably. I'll select 3, 5 or 7 of the 'branches' to wire into position to serve as trunks ..... as soon as it grows a little more and offers some indication of what it wants to be. It blooms like crazzy, too, though I always snip the flower buds off so their energy goes into increasing vegetative mass.
^ A Ficus salicifolia/nerifolia twin trunk. All 3 are sorely in need of pruning/wiring and more development.

Al

Thanks Al for the great examples. I found this photo of a Ficus Lyrata tree that I think illustrates what I am visually going for:

Since you brought up Iron chelate, I have a Manilla Mango grown from seed that is about 1.5 years old. A few of the leaves look scorched, and the newer growth is not dark green. There are also small holes in the new leaves. Could this be an Iron deficiency? Potassium deficiency? Fertilizer burn?

My coleus after hacking away a couple of weeks back. It was 2ft wide and a foot or more tall before this. It is under lights now. Hopefully I can turn this into an interesting bonsai in time. Any suggestions?

Looking good! I like the multi trunk thing. I've been playing with several "disfigured" Campfire coleus, from a tray of cuttings that blew over and was left for for dead all summer, and have a couple "Standard" styled coleus too.

... Might have to start all over though, I tempted fate by keeping everything out until last week brought the first below-freezing temps, which would have been fine if the wind that came with it didn't drop a tree limb on my mini-greenhouse and the temperature didn't plunge to 24* F (and stay there for three days straight)

My dining room is now a sea of bare branches, and I'm just hoping something survived :( Thanks for posting yours, now I can at least live vicariously through photos!

Tropic of Cancer.....I just pruned my Coleus around 3 week’s ago too.

I like the single trunk look, can’t wait to see what your plant looks like after some new growth and some more pruning. I am planning to attempt and grow a Persian Shield as a small single trunk tree....we’ll see how that goes!

Here is my Coleus about 3 weeks post pruning

Mike: Mine is in a slow recovery mode now. This is its second winter indoors. I have another one, of a different type, but it looks quite bare now. Your looks pretty good although I think three trunks may look better. But it is your plant and enjoy the journey.

Kamereone: Sorry about your mishap(s). They root easily - needs some warmth and light. May be an opportunity to do a forest style planting.

Thank You For Showing Your Coleus As This Gives Me Hope With My Sad Little Thing.....
Needs To Re- Grow a Lot Until I Try Anything Though

So Any Updates Guys?
Thanks

I Bought Myself Some Coleus Black Dragon Seeds That I Hope To Make Into a Bonsai....

Is It Better To Grow Them On Normally Or Should I Start a Couple {Then Thin To One} In The Bonsai Pot Then He will Live In For The Rest of Its Life?
Thanks

BD has very large leaves and won't be well-suited to anything other than a rather large bonsai. You might consider some of the coleus varieties with small leaves and short internodes. If a bonsai lives in the same pot for all its life, it's likely that life will be much shorter than it might have been if the pot size was increased in linear proportion to the plant's o/a mass as it increased.

Generally speaking, new bonsai practitioners not under the tutelage of a more experienced artist will not have a good understanding of how to allow the plant to grow wild for an appropriate length of time before chopping the plant back and letting it grow again. This might be repeated several times, and/or several chops might be in the planning at any given point in time, all focused on producing a trunk that is thick at the base, but tapers rapidly over the height of the trunk. Many of the trees I have in training already have 3-4 sacrifice branches, the function of which is only to add visual weight to the trunk up until the point they are sacrificed.

On this ^^^ tree, by the time the scar where the trunk was chopped is healed, the trunk diameter immediately above the scar will be much thicker, and the rapid taper will be look natural, giving the illusion of much greater age to the tree.

This ^^^ is the scar 2 years after the chop - almost healed and the taper looking much more believable.

Al

OK
So Grow On Normally 1st Then Pot in Bonsai Pot and Shape, So IF You De-Leaf The BD, Will it NOT Grow Smaller Leaves and Do You Know Any That Will Be Suitable For Bonsaing?
Thanks Al

Often, you can purchase mixed cell packs of coleus as bedding plants. Most of these have smaller leaves and are suitable to practice bonsai with.

This is a bedding plant that has been chopped once. The first 3 branches and the top have been selected. From this point forward, the plant would be allowed to grow unencumbered for a year, then additional branches would be chosen and ramification on the older branches would begin. Needs more filling in, but it's on its way.

Al

Thanks Al
I'm Doing It This Way So That As You Say Practice Bonsai Make Perfect Bonsai......

OK
I Started Some More Seeds off and I Now Have Some Good Sized Seedlings....
How Long Did You Leave Them Before You Started Training Them?
Thanks

Wait for them to grow. In summer keep it outside and they will grow rapidly. At that time you can start pruning selectively for the shape you want. Wiring is difficult since they break easily. Pruning is easy and they grow quite fast. Mine is two years old. Last summer it was probably about 18 inches on all directions and I pruned it before bringing it in. Then I forgot to water in time and lost a lot of leaves but it bounced back again. The trunk is about an inch wide at the bottom. My wife thinks it is a wild hen. Here it is now:

Thank You For Sharing Tropic, Do You Know Which Kind it is?
Mines Just Off The Shelf Jobby's Until I Can Get This Right
Thanks Again For Sharing

No idea about the type. It was from a cutting of neighbors store bought potted arrangement. I have a few others of different types but do not know the names.

Any Updates Guys?
Thanks