Sunday, December 29, 2013

The elephant hornbeam

Oriental hornbeam, Carpinus orientlis, collected in Croatia in 2010. This remarkable tree has this enormous thick low branch which looks like it belongs to an elepahnt. It would be easy to just cut it off an create a decent well behaving good bonsai. But this I will not do having several dozen hornbeams in my collection. This will become the elephant tree. It is in the fairy tale style, not wanting to look like a bonsai but rahter like a remarkable ancient tree, weird and even grotesque, but unique.