As I am writing this we are only in the last part of February, but it seems spring is right around the corner. Spring has been showing up earlier in this part of the world in recent years, just as summer has become longer and hotter and winter generally shorter and milder. From a practical standpoint in bonsai it means having less time to do off-season work in preparation of the growing season, in addition to the concern that plants might initiate growth and then be subject to an abrupt turnaround in temperature, as winter returns in… well, what is technically still winter.

In light of this, I have been busy of late taking care of necessary work in advance of the plants coming out of dormancy. The tasks are the usual – pruning, wiring and repotting. Today I did the first two items on that list for this specimen, a Tamarack (Larix laricina):

This tree is unique in our collection for a couple of reasons; it is the only true formal upright we have (we have one large Procumbens Juniper that pretends to be formal upright but really is not), and it is the only Tamarack we have.

Tamarack, or American Larch, might be thought of as a native tree by some, but it is not native to where we are. They occur naturally in the very northernmost Northeastern and Central United States on up into vast stretches of Canada, where their range extends westward on up into Alaska. Obviously, this is a species that is adapted for colder climates. Asheville, due to the influence of our elevation, might be as far south as Tamarack can grow without special assistive measures. That may well change in the years ahead.

This specimen is also unique for being one of only a few older bonsai in the Arboretum’s collection for which we have reliable information pertaining to its history and age. This tree was collected as 1-year seedling in Michigan in 1974 by a local woman named Dorothy Wells, which makes it approximately 40 years of age. In all, Ms. Wells collected 4 such seedlings and brought them home to Asheville, where she planted 3 of them in her home landscape and made 1 into a bonsai. The 3 she put in the ground still live and they are now 25 to 30 feet tall and about 1 foot in diameter a few feet above ground level. This bonsai stands 30 inches tall and 2 inches in diameter, measured a couple of inches above the base.

The first time I saw this tree was at a show put on by the local Blue Ridge Bonsai Society in 1992, and it looked like this:

Ms. Wells donated the tree to the Arboretum in 1995, at which point it looked like this:

The next year I began working on the design of the tree, removing the lowest branch on the left, straightening the upper trunk and attempting to bring down the first branch on the right (I have come to find Tamarack, or at least this specimen, difficult to train, in that it has a short memory once wiring is removed. I am still trying to train that branch to descend):

This bonsai, like all others, has its faults. I find it easy to forgive them, however, when it is in its autumn colors: