Czech Yamadori

In the early years of my bonsai passion I have spent most of my weekends somewhere in woodlands  criss crossing selected areas with the hope to find the TREE of my life.  Most of the time I came back  empty handed just with a hope for the next days.   But HAPPY anyway.        The main challenge for me at that time was not about finding a tree but to select the one worth the collection in terms of the quality and potential success rate of collection.   Soon I have realised that leaving that only  on my heart is not the best way to follow.   Suppressing the burning desire to DIG for a while leaving it for next day, week, month or even year(s) proved it is the way forward for me. This was especially true for such special trees such as blackthorns as it is very rare to find  a tree with a character you look for.   You want it so desperately that you are tempted to lower the bar pretty low. Just have a ...

  Pears and cherries are trees of my childhood.    At my Grandparents there used to be an very old pear with small fruit.   Was it a P. pyraster?   Don't know.   I only remember the  starlings singing in the morning  somewhere inside the crown near their nesting box...     There are so many things we would like to know but the people who could help you with that left this side of river many years ago... A bit of the history of this tree: Air layered back in 2019 from a donor tree.   Spring 2025 Height: 20 cm Pot: Jakub Malcharek.       The colour of this growing pot reminds me the area where I search for my mahaleb or pears.   Dry slopes with scattered reddish rocks and tiny vegetation flowering in the spring.    As a display pot I will select probably slightly more masculine, smaller and darker pot.    One day perhaps 

 Which one is better?

  Collected in 2004.    Current height  54 cm.  Pot: Yixing. The design of this tree really doesn't reflect the natural habitus of  Cornus in the area I live.    In its natural habitat in Central Bohemia ( limestone based dry slopes ) it grows like a shrub or a small multiple trunks tree up to 3-4 m.  Its native range is in Southern Europe from where it has been taken  by Celts to Central Bohemia I guess. Another location where it can be found  and it is quite abundant is in south Moravia.  Below you can see a typical habitus of Cornus . https://pladias.cz/taxon/pictures/Cornus%20mas#image4,  Aleš Moravec This is a typical location in Central Bohemia.   

 Finally, it seems there is a nice bunch of flower buds this year ready to open...

  Prunus mahaleb Current height:  8 cm Width:  30 cm  with the target 26-27 cm Tree has been collected in 2019 with the plan to make a shohin sized cascade.    Due to the damage of the some important roots during its collection,  the tree has decided to  quit some live veins on its trunk resulting in a massive deadwood.    Air layered in spring 2020 and separated in Sept of that year. Spring 2021.   The inclination of the tree has been moved even further to the  left.  That made a full cascade BUT I did not like it.  It looks too long due to the separation between the trunk and the foliage mass.   IN order to bring the foliage closer to the trunk,  I had to bend the top of the trunk back to the right quite severely.   Step by step in the course of two years we get it in more or less vertical position.  And at the same time span we have used one of the lower branches to create the cas...