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Over the years I’ve been interested in bonsai, I’ve purchased a lot of material from Brent Walston at Evergreen Gardenworks. This Contorted White Flowering Quince has been one of the most successful. I bought it in 2013. Brent said it was over 20 years old at the time, so now in 2020, it is at least 27 years old.
These contorted flowering quinces display design problems that must be tackled from the beginning or the tree will turn into a tangled briar patch. Yes, there are thorns, and they are long and very sharp. There are so many of them, it wasn’t worth it to trim them off, it seemed to me, so I tried to incorporate them into my design.
Many of the thorns are contorted themselves, just like the branches. By paying attention to them and their placement, I used their twisting nature to accent the movements of the branches. As for the branches, when I first began working with this tree, I decided to just let the branches go wild and see if anything suggested itself to me.
The branches are long and floppy. I found the traditional method of cutting the branches back to 1, 2 or 3 nodes at the end of the growing season useless. Instead, to produce a compact, tight mass, I wired each branch and then folded it back on itself. As the mass formed, from season to season, I could see a shape forming. When needed, I use the traditional method of pruning, but almost all the time, I just let the tree run in the summer, and then, at the beginning of fall, I wire the new growth. I call the resulting form Abstract Expressionist Bonsai, because the tree resembles child-like scribbling that the Abstract Expressionists often used to start their works with.
This picture is a stereogram.
This bonsai is a Contorted White Flowering Quince. It is quite vigorous and it is a prolific bloomer.
When I got this tree in 2013 from Brent at Evergreen Gardenworks, he said it was 25 to 30 years old. Now, in 2020, that means at the minimum, the tree is 32 years old.
After a couple of years of growing freely, I began to give it shape. The path I chose for the tree is based on American Abstract Expressionism, a style of art that among other things, uses scribbling and apparently undirected markings to allow the mind of the observer to impose its own order on the image. The confidence and boldness of this approach to art is what brought American art to the center stage of art world-wide.
This is an anaglyph image. To see the 3D, use red/cyan glasses.
This tree continues to develop in a pleasing manner. Checking my notes, I find that it is between 25 and 30 years old. Even so, due to the branch structure, this quince seems much older, at least to me. Additionally, it looks like from the buds, that it is going to have a ton of flowers.
This is a stereogram.
The leaves have fallen. When the structure of the tree is visible, as it is in this picture, I can see several opportunities for slight pruning.
This picture is a stereogram.
My Contorted White Flowering Quince has continued to mature nicely. As it is fall, I checked the foliage for some autumn color. Most of the leaves are green, or greenish, but I felt there was enough yellow to merit a fall picture.
This picture is a stereogram.
This bonsai is a Contorted White Flowering Quince. In style, it’s a semi-cascade. It’s about 35 years old.
I often characterize this tree as an abstract expressionist bonsai.
This picture an be viewed both as a stereoscopic picture, or as a 360 720 degree panorama. To view as a panorama, click below.
IMG_0008.JPG - pnr.ma/cQjiiC
It is warming up here in the upper Midwest, and with that, another flush of blossoms is coming.
To see the 3-D, use red/cyan glasses.
To read the QR code in the picture, use your smart phone and a scanner app. To find out more about QR codes, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item, and select the Seals option.
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Also, check out my video on YouTube, Milk Bottle Reliquary. You will find it here:
www.fredtruck.com/reliquary/
You can also find my new book, The Circuit, here:
www.fredtruck.com/circuit/Contents.htm
My Contorted White Flowering Quince is blooming again, but as you can see in the picture, many flower buds haven’t opened yet.
When the tree is in this state, the quince is still a good visual experience because of the interest generated by the network created by its contorted branches.
Stitched from seven pictures.
To see the 3-D, use red/cyan glasses.
To read the QR code in the picture, use your smart phone and a scanner app. To find out more about QR codes, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item, and select the Seals option.
______________________________________
Also, check out my video on YouTube, Milk Bottle Reliquary. You will find it here:
www.fredtruck.com/reliquary/
2-25-17 The major change for my Contorted White Flowering Quince this year was being potted in an antique Yamaaki cascade pot that had a pinched rope rim. I plan to defoliate the tree in August because it definitely does increase the blooming, not the following year, but the year after that. The season isn’t over yet, and there may be more flowers coming.
To see the 3-D, use red/cyan glasses.
To read the QR code in the picture, use your smart phone and a scanner app. To find out more about QR codes, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item, and select the Seals option.
To find out how I make these 3-D conversions, go to www.fredtruck.com, choose the Articles menu item and choose the Chromobinocular Method option.
___________________________________________________
Also, check out my video on YouTube, Milk Bottle Reliquary. You will find it here:
youtu.be/lVgnIUWRXtA
