Post 38 Camphor Laurel

There are a couple of indusputables about the camphor laurel tree. One is that as a mature tree there are few its equal as a beautiful majestic tree. The second is that there is no doubt about it's toxic invasiveness in the southern Queensland and northern NSW environment. It was introduced here from China, Taiwan, Japan in the early 1800s and many people will be familiar with its use in the old days for building clothes chests. The camphor oils in the timber are an inbuilt insect killer.

I have been aware of a couple in my back yard that have sprung up presumably from bird droppings. They have taken off and it's time for them to go. But they do make a beautiful tree, so why not experiment with a half way house through a bonsai experience for them. They are classified as a class 3 weed in Queensland, along with the Celtis and the Privet so I think I'm not offending any laws by growing them in a pot. Control by landholders is not mandatory, you just can't 'supply' it.  Class 2 weeds can't be supplied or kept.

I cut the first one back over 2 years ago never thinking about recovering it. But then some months ago after it had reshot substantially, I cut it again and pulled it out and replanted it in the ground where I can keep an eye on it. The extraction was quite a job. It had a tap root that was about 100mm in diameter and went straight down.

With spring here the stump has shot very well with many more still coming so it has survived easily. I'll probably leave it there for a year before I top and tail it again.
 

This was what I chainsawed off the bottom. You can see the tap root that supported it.

And this is the second of the two.  Like the first one it has been a multiple seed germination and the seedlings have now fused into a simgle trunk mass. At this point it's about 750MM high. It was about 3 meters high but I've cut that off, sealed the cuts and trimmed the roots all 'round. It now has small shoots coming out all over and in a couple of months will be a mass of foliage.
I'll force the shoots back down the trunks cut the tap root and then let it stay here a little longer. It should make a spectacular bonsai in 10 years - I'll just have to give it a different name!!

I'm looking forward to making pots for them.

Post 37 Juniper Dreaming

Like most people I’ve got a couple of Junipers. One of them is a good 20+ years old and the trunk is not something you’d blog about, despite the fact it is a very attractive little tree.

In short it doesn’t look like this one.

 

The approach available to most of us then is the sometimes controversial technique of attaching young live plants to a weathered piece of wood. It might be frowned on by the Japanese purists but in other places it’s a recognised way for the average enthusiast to approach an impression of age in a Juniper. Unfortunately in some places the collection of such timber specimens may be regarded as a little less than sustainable. Here in Australia we have two problems with this. One is that the deadwood needs to be dense and ‘grainy’, and such specimens are not readily available. Then survivability in our environment is the second challenge with hundreds of species of fungus just waiting to destroy any piece of unprotected dead timber before your eyes. 

Can we take the artificiality of a Phoenix Graft one step further and ‘create’ the required deadwood out of another medium entirely, or would that be going too far? How about a nice white piece of ceramic, that will never absorb water or grime, never rot and last FOREVER.

Ok so I’ve been thinking about it for a while and time comes to have a go.

These shots are with the clay still wet, so it looks greyish. It will fire white. It’s about 220mm high. Note the groove for the tree location. Clearly it's designed for the 'roots' to be under the potting medium. It still has one clay prop holdingit up while it dries.

This is the front.

 And the LHS.

 And the Back

 And RHS

And a detail shot.

 It’s a few months away but I will follow up after firing when it is joined with a small Juniper I have ready.

I have made another trunk too, a little larger and more complex than this one and it needs more work yet. Here it is still wet and propped.

 Cheers,

Happy Potter

Post 36 More on slumping

I did a test a while ago on pyro-plastic deformation - slumping, of the clay I have been using.
On the last firing I repeated that test using the RGH Stoneware as well as the LGH which is its base. It was suggested to me that the RGH which has an iron colourant added to give it the buff colour may be fluxing the clay, making it more flexible in vitrification.

This is a picture of the test pieces. The white one in the front is the LGH.

I can't really say there is any difference.

So what do I do now - start a series of trials on all sorts of different clays, research the firing cycle I'm using to test the level of vitrification, or conduct some work to test a number of additives to change the clay characteristic.

And so I have prepared some samples for the last test above. I've taken 200 gms of my RGH stoneware clay for 8 samples and then added 10gms of either Silica, Aluminium Hydrate, Kaolin, Magnesium Carbonate, Woolastonite, Rutile flour, Talc, Dolomite. I'm most hopeful of the talc test.
These are drying now and so will be a little while before I get to fire them to maturity.
It would be really great to crack this one.