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Starting an olive bonsai from scratch

May 29, 2012 by Jonas Dupuich

Last fall a friend dug up an olive tree growing as a weed in his backyard. He figured someone might be interested in it. I figured it would make a fun bonsai project.

Black olive

Black olive

The tree was tall and rangy but there was some taper at the base of the trunk.

Shoots emerging from the trunk

Shoots emerging from the base of the trunk

Not needing the top of the tree, I cut it off and reduced the shoots growing from the trunk.

After removing the rest of the tree

After removing most of the foliage

I bare-rooted the tree and removed almost all of the roots when I repotted in winter. Since then the tree has been growing well. You can see in the photos below how much it has grown in the past month.

Olive

New foliage – 4/28/12

Olive

5/25/12

Not all of the new growth is desired. Shoots keep emerging from the base of the trunk – a characteristic common to olives.

Spring growth

More shoots emerging from the base of the trunk

From these beginnings it’s easy to chart the tree’s journey towards becoming a bonsai. To offer an idea of how I hope to develop the branches, I included a photo of an olive bonsai displayed at this year’s Bay Island Bonsai exhibit.

Olive

Small olive bonsai

The tree has a great rootbase, but the branches are only a few years old. While my tree will not have the dramatic taper of this olive, the general silhouette will be similar.

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Filed Under: Bonsai Development Tagged With: Olive

Previous Post: « How to pot pine seedling-cuttings
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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Trinity River says

    May 29, 2012 at 5:04 am

    great bonsai. thanks for sharing

  2. Andrew Kasper says

    May 29, 2012 at 6:24 am

    Is black Olive the same as the European Olive? andy

  3. Jonas Dupuich says

    May 29, 2012 at 8:08 am

    Hi Andrew – yes, black olives are European Olives. European Olives fall into a small number subspecies and a large number of cultivars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive#Subspecies). Mine may be a Mission, but that’s just a guess.

  4. Scott says

    June 4, 2012 at 3:51 am

    Those of us in tropical areas know the “black olive” as the common name for Bucida buceras, a native of the Florida Keys. It is described here http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/st102 and is not closely related.

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