Sit! Sit Up (darn it)

[tomc]

The leap to trying to make a deciduous tree do things it was never able to do in nature, is something new growers get seduced into. All I can advise is once you get tired of doing the undo-able, take a while and try doing the do-able.

Bald cypress is a tree ideally suited to bonsai training. Its wood is naturaly resistant to decay, making all kinds of styling options real posibilities. It lives in the bottom-est of bottom lands where intermitant flooding can go on for months. It back buds well, and heals over wounds at warp speed (for a plant).

What we know is bald cypress in wet conditions, forms "knees" much more commonly than it does in upland conditions. What there are no more than a small handful of, are bald cypress in bonsai pots with knees.

Some folks have tried exposing roots and bending into exposed roots "knees" and bound them in place with rubber bands. Which only sorta looks right.

Your Mission possible, (should you choose to accept it) is to evoke knees on your bonsai bald cypress trees.

50 million knobby kneed bald cypress can't all be wrong.

[tomc]

I can think of few native north American trees better suited to bonsai training than a bald cypress. Wild specimens abound in the south and riverine lowlands. They are commonly offered for sale on the net by nurseries. And are idiot simple to propagate (I'll use myself as the idiot). They will happily grow in most of the lower 48.