White cedar bonsai, Thuja occidentalis How old are they:You just might have an ancient tree on your hands

摘要

While I agree that the actual age of a bonsai is not as significant as the appearance of age, I still think it is an important consideration. Besides, it is fun to know how old the tree really is. In the last 25 years I have collected several dozen white-cedars for training as bonsai. (The "cedars" to which I refer are not true cedars (cedrus); they are Thuja. I am using their common name "white cedar"). Eight of the 35 trees in my current collection are white-cedars, all of them collected. Many of the others collected by me are now in the hands of other members of our bonsai club. Very few have died. The tree that inspired me to get involved in the bonsai art is a white cedar, that's how I got hooked on these delightful and rugged trees. I discovered that tree in 1983 growing on top of a concrete abutment, part of an abandoned power dam. But estimating the age of the tree was not my first experience counting growth rings on trees. My father, who is now 91, was a tree-geek all his life. With natureand nurture both working on me, I never had a chance. It was inevitable that I would become a tree-geek. It became first-nature to methat if the end-grain of wood was exposed, there was a moral obligation to count the growth rings. It made no difference if it was fire wood, storm damage or the plank that formed the table we were having lunch upon; we had to count the rings. A limb ring-count on "Alpha", as it was dubbed by that same father of mine, revealed that the limb was at least 40 years old. That jibed with the age of the concrete wall on which it had taken root. That wall was abandoned about 1915, according to historical records. The tree probably germinated about 1939. That means it was 44 years old in 1983 (Figure l) and is now about 72 years old. (Figure 2) I like knowing stuff like this.