Newsletter – July/August 1999
Calendar of Events
This Month's Meeting –Wednesday July 28, at 7:00 p.m. at the Pittsburgh Civic Garden Center 5th and Shady Ave. Lynn Frank, artist and museum instructor from the Frick Museum of Art, will show the basic techniques involved in the creation of a sumei painting. Sumei painting covers a great variety of approaches to household, religious and decorations. It started in China eventually reaching Japan. Sumei painting covers folk art, calligraphy, scenery, as well as mythology and portraiture. The forms of scroll painting encompasses all manor of approaches of design from realistic to extremely abstract. Originally scrolls were painted in black and white but as the centuries progressed more and more color has appeared in scroll painting. While they appear to be hung in various sizes the scrolls can be as small as a few inches by a few inches up to 15 to 18" wide and 6 to 8 feet long. One of the oldest of oriental arts, sumei painting has been recognized the world over as one of the finest of design factors. This will be an opportunity to see at close distance just how oriental brush painting can be accomplished. While a common educational medium in the orient, scroll painting is relatively unknown in America. This program will be a first rate opportunity to see this most beautiful of oriental graphic arts.
Other Events
August meeting: Our annual picnic will be August 15 at White Oak Park Dogwood Grove in McKeesport. See enclosed map for directions to the park. The time is 4:00 p.m. until dusk. The entrée and drinks will be supplied by the club. Members are asked to bring starches, salads, and desserts. Last names beginning A to L, are asked to bring starches, M to S, to bring salads, and T to Z, desserts. Along with the picnic we will have a FLEE MARKET. People wishing to donate bonsai related things can bring them for the White Elephant Table. People wishing to sell trees and related materials are free to do so. We will use the extra picnic tables or you can bring your own table. We will also have a raffle. This is an excellent opportunity for some good food, good company, and lots of good bonsai stuff. All are welcome! Attention: NO August Newsletter will be printed!
September 15 meeting will feature the procedures necessary to producing good root over rock specimens. The program will also explain how to carve rocks that will accept roots. Anyone who wishes to participate might bring a small hammer and a medium flat blade or Phillips head screwdriver. Rocks for carving and trees for attaching will be provided. Those participating in this workshop, there will be a nominal charge. See September’s newsletter.
October 15 & 16: Demonstration and workshop by Kelley Adkins
November 17: Plans incomplete
December 15: Christmas Party
Now that summer’s heat surrounds us, daily care may be reduced to watering thoroughly, and often on hot, low humidity days and less often on high humidity days. Recall that each person’s yard – growing – display area is different and must be learned by observing the plants’ reactions to various conditions. Generally speaking the tree will thrive, exist, or suffer depending on how much sun, i.e., heat the tree can stand when taking into account pot size, depth, soil mixture (moisture retention).
With these few generalities, I’d like to go on with a sort of explanation or perhaps apology concerning the trees I’ve chosen to detail in the "care sheet" section over the past two years. To explain just how bonsai has changed over the past ten or more years seems necessary, particularly regarding growing young stock to become a "mature" or "finished" bonsai. As I look back over the forty plus years I’ve been growing stock, I feel I’ve done beginning bonsai fanciers a disservice. How many seedlings, cuttings, grafts ever reached maturity. Just because I had a vision of growing on trees does not mean that every person starting out will succeed in keeping a tree alive until it develops that essential bonsai shape. The oft-held notion that if left to its own devices, the tree will eventually develop into a "bonsai" is fantasy. Such is rarely the case. Most people forget the tree. I had a maple in the ground in Ohio, thinking every year I’d cut it back; I didn’t, nor did I cut back the bald cypress I planted over the septic field, the Hoopsi blue spruce, the American hornbeam, dozens of dwarf conifers, not to mention the hundreds of scots pines, Chinese elms, crab apples now towering to 30 to 40 feet.
Keep it cut back, I tell everyone I talk with, but did I? At first I did, but some how the enthusiasm faded and the seasons passed. I suppose my message is to look to larger stock and leave the propagation and growing on to others better suited and better equipped.
| Species: | Common name: | Virginia Creeper |
| Botanical name: | Parthenosis tricuspidata | |
| Japanese name: | Natsu-zuta | |
| Yoshimura reference: | #212 |
Advantages: Primarily a vine but when kept pruned it produces a gnarled trunk, branches well, possesses good buttress roots, propagates easily and has beautiful fall color. Also it grows wild throughout the northern tier of the states. Best displayed in fall and winter. Can be collected in early spring.
Disadvantages: Large, three lobed leaves. Leaves tend to burn in summer; watch for caterpillars, aphids, scale.
Bonsai Potential: Keeping my comments in mind on a scale of 1 to 10 perhaps practically it is a 5 but great things can be done with it in time, luck, care, discipline.
Growing location: Filtered sun particularly in summer’s heat.
Watering: Grow in a deeper pot and keep it well watered.
Propagation: Collect larger specimens in early spring and /or make spring hardwood cuttings. Soft wood cuttings can be made in July.
Fertilizing: Balanced but weak fertilizer May to September.
Over-wintering: Do not allow to dry out; keep in shade, well mulched.
Styling: Sinuous, cascade, informal.
| Species: | Common name: | Porcelain berry |
| Botanical name: | Ampelopsis | |
| Japanese name: | No reference | |
| Yoshimura reference: | Not listed |
Note: This plant is so common I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a botanical reference to it . Somehow I’ve lost my book on vines so I’ll rely upon others to supply the proper botanical name and its Japanese reference as well.
Advantages: Easily found growing in hedges and in equally inhospitable locations. Easily dug; transplants well/easily; propagates easily from seed, cuttings; fast growing smallish leaves; good fall color; abundant variegated fruit.
Disadvantages: As with so many vines the vining tentrils must be allowed to grow to their full extension and cut back in early spring, otherwise the trunk will not expand with any speed.
Bonsai Potential: To the inexperienced perhaps a 4 but to a person with skill, discipline, unlimited time perhaps a 6.
Growing location: Full sun; watch for leaf burn.
Watering: The porcelain berry will grow in dry, infertile soils but will thrive with ample water; do not allow to dry out when in soft growth.
Propagation: Collecting and from both seeds and cuttings.
Fertilizing: Use a balanced fertilizer.
Over-wintering: Hardy; watch for mice, rabbits.
Styling: Cascade; informal upright.