Of This Place
Allegheny serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis) is found all over the mountains of Western North Carolina, but is often overlooked. It can be a tall shrub or a small tree, sometimes even a large tree, but is usually scattered about in the forest landscape and does not draw much attention to itself. There are two notable exceptions to serviceberry's customary tendency to blend in. The first occurs in very early spring when serviceberry announces itself by popping out with a multitude of bright white flowers. They usually bloom about the same time as red maple (Acer rubrum), making both tree species among the first woody natives to flower.
The other time of year that serviceberry draws notice is typically around June when it produces fruit. The fruit looks berry-like but is actually a pome, like an apple, having a soft core filled with little seeds. The fruit is edible and tasty as wild food, but you'll have to compete with the birds to get any of it. Many songbirds and other wildlife feed on serviceberries, and flocks of robins or cedar waxwings will sometimes descend and work over the trees until every fruit is consumed. The autumn color of the species is yellow to orange, pleasant enough although not extraordinarily showy.
There are cultivated varieties of serviceberry planted in several locations on Arboretum property, and wild serviceberries occur naturally here as well. There happened to be a few young wild ones eking out a scrappy living on the exposed slope that used to be adjacent to the Education Center plaza, behind the step waterfall. What was a disturbed space back then is where the Bonsai Exhibition Garden sits today. On the eve of construction, before the bulldozer came to work over the site in preparation for building the garden, I dug up one of the scraggly young serviceberries and put it in a pot. The little two-trunked tree didn't look like much. Collecting it was an impulsive act, done in the spirit of saving some living piece of what used to be, knowing that the space was about to be transformed.
That salvaged serviceberry grew in its plastic nursery pot for a number of years, out among a host of other small woody plants in the hoop house. It received no real attention other than the minimum care required to keep it alive and healthy. Then one day the little tree got the bonsai side-eye. That's when you look at an unsuspecting plant and think you see some potential in it as a bonsai candidate, and start getting ideas about developing it. In those days I was doing this frequently, fueled by an enthusiasm not yet tempered by experience. The serviceberry was subsequently root pruned and transplanted into a bonsai training pot. From that point forward I began slowly steering it toward an appearance suggesting a full-sized tree. No photographs exist of those early years in the serviceberry's training. It was just one of many young plants we were growing back then and I was not as dedicated as I should have been in photo-documenting everything that was going on.
The first image we have shows the serviceberry bonsai in summer of 2011, about seven years after being rescued:
In spring of 2012 the tree looked like this:
Shortly after, the serviceberry made its bonsai garden debut:
The youth of this specimen shows pretty plainly in the above image. No real effort was made to give this tree the appearance of great age, although I thought it sufficiently presented the impression of a mature tree. In truth, I perhaps put the serviceberry on display a little prematurely owing to a desire to have the tree return to the place from whence it came. It was there before the garden was built and now the serviceberry came back home as a bonsai.
Beginning in 2013 and continuing on through 2017, the seasonal interest of our serviceberry bonsai was consistently documented and frequently on display in the bonsai garden (Click on any image for full view):
Of particular note during this period was June of 2013, when our serviceberry bonsai not only produced fruit but I managed to get a photo of it:
There are no images to show for 2018 or 2019, and the serviceberry wasn't seen in the garden those years either. For the first time the tree began to show signs of struggling. Growth was weak and sections of the branching were being lost to dieback. In retrospect, I think I let the specimen get too tight in the pot. No bonsai can be held at the same size forever, despite assiduous pruning and rigorously applied horticultural technique. Trees need to grow. We can ride the brake on a bonsai's growth rate, but we can't make it stop altogether without ultimately causing damage or death.
Compare these two images, taken seven years apart:
2011
2017
Note how much more ramified and full the crown of the tree became over that span of time. Now take note of the container the tree is in. It's the same. A fully developed bonsai can look amazing when grown in a pot that looks impossibly small for it, but it's a tightrope walk keeping such a plant healthy over the long haul. Root pruning will forestall the day a bonsai needs more room in the pot, but sooner or later the tree will resent being constantly restrained. Plants let you know when they're unhappy.
This image from October 2020 shows the serviceberry at a point where the decline has been stabilized. The bonsai container has been replaced by a large plastic pot, while dead limbs have been removed and some regrowth has occurred:
These two images from January of 2022 show the serviceberry well on the road to recovery:
With the start of the 2024 growing season, our serviceberry bonsai is back on display in the bonsai garden after a six-year absence:
The new, blue oval container for this specimen was created by Robert Wallace of Wallace Woods Pottery in Tryon, N.C. An argument might be made that the serviceberry is now slightly over-potted, although from a horticultural perspective this is not correct. Aesthetically — as a matter of taste — the container might ideally be just a little shallower than it is. I like the tree-pot combination well enough, however, and expect that before too long the serviceberry will grow to a degree that any discrepancy in the relationship will be overcome.
This specimen's trunk has always been slender, lacking any pronounced taper, although it is slowly increasing in girth and showing signs of the bark maturing and beginning to fissure:
Like serviceberry growing in the wild, our bonsai Allegheny serviceberry is unassuming. It has an open, airy grace about it, a freshness that compensates for any lack of imposing stature or gnarly character. Its design started out in the classical vein but over the years its character has become ever more naturalistic. In this way our serviceberry mirrors our bonsai collection's overall development, and my own. Our serviceberry bonsai was born here, was developed here and is a species native to our region that is not often seen in bonsai form. Therein lies its appeal.
2011
2024