centaura

This is an experiment that started as a whim. I was looking for things to fill out a mame/companion plant display for a show last summer, and on a whim I threw a newly rooted cutting of dwarf impatient into a pot for the show. I never thought that it would last, so I didn't give it much thought.

Well, I was doing some repotting this last weekend and I took a look at him again. He's not too bad looking, he's got a few flaws but if he hangs on long enough he might end up interesting. I repotted him into a shallower container, blue to contrast with his fuschia flowers, as the original pot wasn't suited to his style. He's very two-dimensional right now which I am going to see if I can correct with some trimming and directed growing. He's started growing a nebari - which I was quite surprized to find. Its covered up by the soil right now, as I hope to develope it more. His one main flaw is the reverse taper in the trunk. I'm almost tempted to cut him off at that point and root him again.

Anyway, here's a pre-repotting pic (green pot) and a post-repotting pic (blue pot), plus one with a pop can for scale. Any comments are weclome - has any else tried using dwarf impatient for bonsai? Anyone have any clue how long they'd live indoors?

-Centaura

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	dwimp pop can 12-22-07.jpg (84.6 KB, 22 views)

bonsaikc

Are you saying this is a dwarf impatiens? The answer to your question depends on if its an annual or a perennial variety. As it is, I think you have a beautiful little accent plant on your hands. All it needs is moss!

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centaura

Yes, I meant impatiens. My mother has a habit of adding letters or sounds to words, and its taken me years to figure out which words she's taught me that I need to relearn. Thanks for pointing this one out - I've worked in a garden center, I would have thought I would have caught the no 't' before this.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure its an annual variety - I have it indoors and have been treating it like a tropical. Someone in one of my clubs was handing out cuttings for folks to root. She saw this cutting potted in the green pot in my display in the August show, asked me if it was one of the ones she'd been handing out, and when I said it was, she promptly declared 'I want it back!'.

Its been growing just fine, so now I'm curious how long I can keep it going indoors.

-Centaura

T.S.Wheeler

I've never actually seen any flowers trained as bonsai, perhaps because people don't want to spend much effort on material that tends to be relatively short lived; but it sounds like a good idea for practicing techniques. I do have an old book (The Time Life Encyclopedia of Gardening: Miniatures and Bonsai) that gives directions for trainig a mum as a bonsai in the root over rock style. The idea of training flowering annuals as bonsai has occured to me before, but I never seem to make time to do it.

Thats a very impressive little specimen you have! I don't know if this would work on an annual, but to fix the reverse taper you could try that technique wherein you constrict the base of the tree, causing it to swell? I can't remember what that technique is called. Anyway, just a thought.

Travis

centaura

It might be worth a try. I do have a pot with the rest of the cuttings, I might try it on one of them. I like this little guy, his flowers are perfectly in scale to his size. I trimmed him a little, and he seems to be backbudding all over, so I might be able to get some branches going on him. That would just leave the reverse taper to deal with.

Here's a picture from the display he was in, if you look carefully (its a bad pic) you can see a couple of his flowers.

-Centaura

Attached Images

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T.S.Wheeler

I love the tiny flowers! How tall is it?

This is very inspiring--I kept trying to think what flowers I had thought about training as bonsai; then I remembered: I've got several miniature begonias with trident leaves and tiny white flowers. I haven't attempted training it partly out of laziness and partly because I don't know how it would respond to pruning. It is very encouraging to see that it has successfully been done, though. The only problem with my begonias is that they develop big bulbs at the base, so I might have to train them as shohin, as opposed to mame, and burry the bulb in a bigger pot. I don't have a lot of experience training bonsai, so it would probably be good practice--especially since thsese flowers are easy to propagate and quick growing. And you can practice on the extras, such as amending the reverse taper.

Do you keep your impatiens in one of your little glass house thingies so you don't have to water it as much? It seems like that tiny pot would dry out quick.

Travis

centaura

I don't know how many annuals would work as bonsai, even this guy is on the line between a companion plant and a bonsai. I think if he continues his current trend and gets a rougher looking 'bark', I can officially call him a bonsai.

I don't have an exact measure, but I just measured a pop can and that's just under 5inches tall (pop can used for scale in the first post). I'm guessing with his new pot he's probably just that size.

I wouldn't call it training in the terms of wiring and branch shaping, as I can't wire this guy at all - the slightest pressure and it snaps. But it would be good for developing snip 'n grow techniques, and just for working on your 'eye'. That's what I'm treating this as, an exercise in design.

He lives outside of one of my greenhouses, as he can go a day and a half without watering. Not much longer, if I go two days the leaves start to wilt. But it recovers fast, and even the one time that I lost all the leaves, I got back to it soon enough that it immediately releafed out. I actually got the current crop of even smaller leaves after that. The pic in the display shows leaves that are slightly smaller than normal for it, but the new pics in the first post actually have smaller leaves yet. I have had success with putting a water bottle over him when I was out of town, but the last time I did that he was very rootbound so he dried out faster than before. That's why I repotted him after he leafed back out. I'll probably have to repot him twice a year if he keeps up the same amount of growth - totally pot bound from an initial June potting to Dec.

-Centaura

T.S.Wheeler

"I don't know how many annuals would work as bonsai"
Your right; not many annuals will work well as bonsai. Since the aspiration of the art of bonsai is to mimic trees on a small scale, the material used is also usually a tree, or at least a woody plant. So maybe annual bonsai shoud be called pseudo-bonsai. Anyway, the annuals in consideration serve our purpses well enough; they have small leaves and can, to some extent, be trained to resemble trees. My little begonias even have a nice beige-brown 'bark.'

"I don't have an exact measure, but I just measured a pop can and that's just under 5inches tall (pop can used for scale in the first post). I'm guessing with his new pot he's probably just that size."
Oops, I forgot about the coke can.

"I wouldn't call it training in the terms of wiring and branch shaping, as I can't wire this guy at all - the slightest pressure and it snaps. But it would be good for developing snip 'n grow techniques, and just for working on your 'eye'. That's what I'm treating this as, an exercise in design."
The design aspect of the training is exactly what I meant. Yeah, trying to wire these things would be pointless and, no doubt, very frustrating.

"he can go a day and a half without watering."
Ah, your impatiens appears to be less demanding than many mame. I hear of people having to water them several times a day. I typically water my plants with smaller pots once or twice a day. So you can save the greenhouses for the plants that really need it, and actually, the drier atmosphere outside the greenhouses probably keeps the leaves on the smaller side. Too much humidity tends to contribute to larger leaf sizes.

"I'll probably have to repot him twice a year if he keeps up the same amount of growth - totally pot bound from an initial June potting to Dec."
This accelerated rate of growth is a nice break from the usual length of time required for other bonsai, I would think. I do wonder how long one can keep an annual alive, though...

Travis

centaura

I'll keep you posted on how it ages. The fast growth is one of the reasons that I think this guy is fun, he's something that I can play with in the winter time when outdoor trees are in storage and other tropicals are slowing down.

He's one of my less demanding mames. That's the main response I get when I start talking mame to folks - 'They need watering two to three times a day'. This guy gets watered in the morning before I go to work, but there are times I work until 1am and have to be back at 8am, so I skip morning watering on those days and water when I get home in the evening. He tolerates this just fine. I can't take it two days - then he starts to wilt, but if I have to be gone for longer I 'dome' him with an empty two-liter pop bottle and he's good for a bit. And the one time he did wilt all his leaves off, one watering and he was sprouting new ones.

-Centaura