Virginia Pine

This blog post will be about one of my favorite trees – It is a Virginia Pine I collected in 2012. Rodney Clemons was kind enough to pot it for me in the box and it spent two years getting strong.

I really liked the bark and the shari on this tree.

Then I repotted it into a bonsai pot in 2014. I had to remove a significant part of a large root on the left side of the tree. The tree grew strongly after being repotted.

In August 2014 Juan Andrade did the initial styling. We decided to do an approach graft on the right side of the tree – you can see the branch attached with plastic tape where it is going to be grafted next spring. This branch is coming from the top (second from the top on the right side). I grafted this branch in Spring 2015.



In May 2015 the tree was growing very strong and the candles were getting ready to be cut.


In July 2015 I cut the candles on this tree for the first time. I also pulled needles earlier in the spring to balance the strength. I think that Virginia pines are as strong as Japanese Black pines and can be decandled every year if strong.

This year the tree is looking very strong and the candles are just as strong as last year. We will see how well it responds next year to getting candles cut two years in a row.

In June 2016 Juan visited me again and we decided that we are going to make it a shorter tree with the apex coming from the branch on the top right after I separate the approach graft. We also cut the candles for the second year in a row.

The graft is almost ready to be separated, but I want to take it slow because it is a very important branch.


And two weeks after cutting candles I got new buds pushing already!

This tree is one of 4 Virginia pines I have. I like Virginia pines for a number of reasons. Frist, they are native to southern US and are strong. The stronger the species the faster it can be developed. Second, since they are native they are relatively easy to find and collect. Third, while the needle quality is not as fine as Japanese black pines it is can be refined through mekiri. And, most importantly, they develop a very nice bark!

I will be posting an update on the first Virginia pine I collected and styled – here is the link to the initial bends. Stay tuned.