Crapemyrtle and Scots Pine
On the surface of it, there’s not much connecting crapemyrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) beyond the fact that both are woody plant species. Crapemyrtle is a deciduous tree originally from southern parts of Asia and Australia, while Scots pine is a coniferous evergreen native to mostly northern Europe. The two subjects of this entry, however, share several points of commonality.
The obvious similarity is that both of these trees are being cultivated as bonsai and belong to the bonsai collection of The North Carolina Arboretum. Both are also cultivated varieties — cultivars, for short — and not straight species. This means the plants in question were the products of manipulation and development by plant breeders looking for certain traits deemed more desirable for ornamental use in landscapes. Our crapemyrtle is a variety known as ‘Natchez’, a cross between Lagerstroemia indica and Lagerstroemia fauriei, developed primarily for its resistance to fungal problems, but also for flower color, bark habit and cold hardiness. The Scots pine in our collection is a dwarf form of unknown variety. Both of these specimens were received in donation in late 2008, and both were given to us by the same person.
Howard Kazan was well known in North Carolina bonsai circles during the last couple decades of the twentieth century. He was a longtime prominent member of the Triangle Bonsai Society in Raleigh before relocating to western North Carolina later in life and becoming active with the Blue Ridge Bonsai Society. Howard was a friendly and well-mannered man who happened to hold strong opinions about the correct way to do bonsai, falling in line with what might be thought of as the “traditional” approach, and he didn’t brook much when it came to alternative ideas about little trees. He and I might have found a lot to disagree about but choose not to. We simply never talking about our differences. Howard was generous in his support of bonsai at the Arboretum, both financially and through several donations of plant material (one of Howard Kazan’s donations has been previously featured in Curator’s Journal and can be found here). I always respected Howard’s knowledge and experience, and both of the trees featured in this entry remind me of him.
Natchez Crapemyrtle
This specimen was fully developed when we received it, and thereby stands as a good representative of the bonsai tastes of the person who designed it. The form of the tree was mostly that of an informal upright, although it did have a slight but perceptible slant to the right. The branch development was closely in line with the standard left branch-right branch-back branch pattern customarily taught in classical bonsai design. The trunk featured well-developed taper and followed an alternating back-and-forth movement from a nicely flaring base, following a single line up to the apex. The container was a tight fitting, round, green-glazed pot of Japanese Tokoname ware. It looked, in other words, exactly the way Howard thought a bonsai ought to look. Here is a photograph taken shortly after the tree was donated:
November 2009
This bonsai was not much to my taste in terms of design, but I respected the skill it took to make it look the way it did. Crapemyrtles are not the easiest of trees to develop as bonsai, owing to their vigorous and somewhat coarse growth habit, in addition to their propensity for dying back from substantial pruning cuts and the slowness with which they cover large wounds. This tree had a big area of die back from the original trunk-chop, but Howard made sure to keep that to what he determined to be the rear of the tree.
I didn’t think it would be worth undoing all that had been achieved over many years of careful development, in hopes of remaking the tree into a more naturalistic bonsai. Instead, I thought I would take a long term approach and try to loosen up the feeling of this little tree incrementally as time went by. The first move was to change the pot to one that offered a little more room for the roots and didn’t look so culturally identifiable. The new container was still Japanese in manufacture, but less obviously so. I also went ahead and let the tree slant to the right in a more pronounced way, which seemed a more natural fit in my view. Here is an image made in 2010, the first year this specimen was displayed in the bonsai garden:
May 2010
People tend to appreciate crapemyrtles in the landscape primarily for their showy mid-summer display of colorful flowers. Some bonsai growers also cultivate crapemyrtles for their floral effect, but this requires letting the tree get a bit overgrown in order to allow the blooms to develop. Howard told me he never let this crapemyrtle flower because doing so spoiled its image as a tidy miniature tree. This was something on which he and I agreed, so I’ve never let this tree flower, either. Crapemyrtle has other virtues, such as its multi-colored exfoliating bark and fantastic autumn coloration:
October 2011
Our Natchez crapemyrtle has been displayed in the garden almost every year for the last decade and a half, and visitors delight in seeing a species they know so well from the landscape presented in miniature form. The following gallery features this specimen in different seasons over a ten year period. Note that the container was changed twice in that time, with the current pot being round in shape and yellow in color, made by American potter Sara Rayner. The design of the tree has remained fairly unchanged in the years we’ve had it, although it has been allowed to loosen up and become more naturalistic in feeling. Note, too, that we sometimes display the crapemyrtle from the opposite direction, showing its “back” side. Howard would never do this because he found the scar from the trunk chop objectionable (click on any image for larger view):
The Natchez crapemyrtle took a turn being the logo tree for the Carolina Bonsai Expo in 2015, the show’s twentieth anniversary:
Here is the Natchez crapemyrtle as it currently appears, on display in the bonsai garden:
June 2025
June 2025
Although it’s changed some over the years, I’m pretty sure Howard would still recognize his tree:
Dwarf Scots Pine
Unlike the crapemyrtle, this Scots pine was undeveloped material when Howard Kazan donated it. Like all people who grow their own little trees, Howard always had an eye out for plants that showed promise as candidates to be developed into bonsai. He found this pine for sale at a nursery specializing in conifers for landscape use. The specimen already had a sizable trunk, suggesting some degree of age because dwarf trees tend to grow more slowly than their straight species counterparts. That, in combination with a multitude of branches and dense, short-needled foliage, attracted Howard’s discerning eye. He never had time to do anything with it, however, so when we received the pine it was pot-bound in a five gallon nursery can, full of promise but still simply raw stock. I transplanted it into a shallow plastic tub and cleaned out some dead branching. I also did some removal of branches that didn’t seem to offer anything useful from a bonsai perspective, although I did nothing to shape the tree or aim it in any particular design direction.
In 2011 the Arboretum had German bonsai artist Walter Pall lined up to be guest artist at the Carolina Bonsai Expo, and I decided this dwarf Scots pine would make a good tree for his demonstration program. Walter is internationally known as a proponent of naturalistic bonsai styling and it seemed to me this pine was destined for that purpose. In order to give him a chance to size up the material, in July of that year I made a series of photos showing the tree in-the-round from eight different perspectives and sent them to him:
Walter liked what he saw. He used the dwarf Scots pine for his demonstration program and made it the focal point of a lesson in bonsai naturalism. Smart, articulate in multiple languages, a dynamic onstage presence and highly opinionated, Walter Pall is something akin to a force of nature. He put on a great show at the Expo. He said he thought the pine we gave him was not suitable for conventional bonsai use, but could be worked with if a person wanted to “design a tree and not a bonsai”. Here are a few images made at his demonstration, during which he talked ceaselessly while delegating the chore of wiring to a couple audience members:
This series of images shows what Walter made of the pine in his demonstration (click on any image for full view):
The dwarf Scots pine had now been started on its journey, but it was nowhere near ready to be presented as a bonsai. After more than a year of further development, the tree looked like this:
May 2013
Nearly four years after the demonstration program, during which time the pine was grown and shaped some more and transplanted into a wooden box, the tree had this appearance in September of 2015 (click on any image for larger view):
Finally, after another year of refinement and being transplanted into a proper bonsai pot, the dwarf Scots pine made its debut in the bonsai garden:
May 2017
I thought the tree looked fabulous. Around this time the Arboretum hosted a visit from American bonsai artist Dan Robinson, another proponent of naturalism, and he had a different opinion. “Why so full?” Dan asked when he saw the pine. “It needs to be opened up — it’s too full for an old tree! You should make some of those branches into deadwood,” he said. I told him Walter Pall had designed the tree. “Walter did? He should know better!” said Dan. Dan and Walter are old friends, but I have no doubt Dan was sincere in his critique. He likes his trees gnarly and full of deadwood. I wouldn’t have changed the tree on Dan’s suggestion, but as it turned out the pine was fated to be made more to his liking.
To this day I still have no good idea what happened. At the end of the 2017 season I put a healthy dwarf Scots pine in the big walk-in refrigerator for winter storage and when I pulled it out in spring it had a sickly color. I recognized the coloration as being the result of spider mite damage, and when I looked at a piece of the foliage under a microscope the sight made me cringe. There were more spider mites on that little piece of pine than I’ve ever seen on any other plant before or since — an uncountable number, an unimaginable degree of infestation — covering every portion of the tree’s crown. And every one of those spider mites was dead.
If you know anything about spider mites, you’ll know that the damage they do to foliage is irrevocable. With a needle evergreen like pine, to lose all foliage at once is usually the kiss of death. The only hope I saw in this case was that the buds for the new season still seemed to be viable. The buds at the end of each twig were still plump and normal looking, even as the foliage was gray-green with fatal morbidity. In short order, all the needles fell off the tree. After a while, many of the buds began to wither as well. I had about lost all hope when a few buds cracked open and new green showed out. Little needles emerged and began to expand while I held my breath in hopes they would continue to grow, and they did. The tree was alive, but its design was ruined. I left it alone that year and it hung on, and not until the end of the growing season could I bring myself to photograph what remained of the tree:
September 2018
September 2018
This was a huge step backward and a crushing disappointment, yet the tree was still alive. I removed it from the bonsai container and planted the pine once more into a plastic pot, then let it grow as it would while I turned my attention to other matters. After three growing seasons the dwarf Scots pine had recovered to this extent:
January 2021
January 2021
The little tree was about half what it once was, but it had stabilized and recovered to a point where I felt I could work on it again:
February 2021
February 2021
It was necessary to yank branches this way and that in order to fill out gaps made by areas where the crown had been severely compromised. I was satisfied with the results, and gratified when the pine responded with great vigor after the extensive work:
November 2023
November 2023
In spring of 2024 the tree was stripped down and wired up one more time:
February 2024
February 2024
Every movable branch was wired, as was every single twig:
This spring, after eight years of recovery and redesign, the dwarf Scots pine was once more on display in the garden, planted in a very large Robert Wallace container:
June 2025
May 2025
Is this bonsai as good as it once was, before disaster struck? That’s a matter of opinion. One thing for certain — our dwarf Scots pine has more character now, for all that it’s been through! I don’t know that Howard Kazan would recognize the tree he gave us, and he might well not like its design, but I suspect he’d be pleased that it eventually amounted to something.
