Presenting Chinese Elm.
Check out this stocky little gem from my backyard bonsai collection. One of my oldest surviving trees. One of the first trees I started growing which led me into this interesting hobby.
ID: 0005
Nickname: Peach
Type: Chinese Elm
Age: 7 years
Grown: cutting
Last repotting: early summer 2017
Wired: never
Past articles featuring this tree:
In early April this month, it was just staring to release it's first buds of the year.
Leaves on Chinese Elm are always very small. The edges are serrated and the veins are textured with ridges.
Here is the tree as it stands now.
The rock is positioned to fill the void under the cordlike aerial roots.
Most of my trees have a rock feature included on top of the soil. For this tree, the slap shaped rock adds a sense of weight, giving the tree more of a strong appearance.
The bark of this tree is very thin and stretched. Almost like The Incredible Hulk with green stretched muscles and rock hard bones.
One of the aerial roots split off a couple years ago when I mishandled the tree when it was last transplanted into this pot. That root grew to become a child tree with leaves of its own. I left it alone, since I really like the twin aerial roots looping over the rock.
The tree is a bit shaggy right now with long straight shoots heading out in all directions. I'm going to let them extend a few more inches out, because I feel this tree could benefit from having more width in the canopy.
The interior branches are a bit too close together in the divisions, and makes the center look overly congested, so I want to discourage adding further divisions in the center near the trunk by pruning it less often.
The large pot it sits in seems to make the tree look even smaller, and I think allowing the canopy to become wider will make this tree more impressive. It's only early Spring, so this tree has plenty of time this Summer to fill out some new branches.
The vegetable flowers (radish I think) beside it were in bloom, making this a nice opportunity for a photo on a warm day.
Thank you for checking out my photos of this bonsai tree I have been growing. Looking forward to sharing my future progress as the sunny season continues.
Photos in this post are all #originalworks by 
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#chinese-elm #spring #hobby #green #leaves
