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Reopening an old wound to promote callus formation

March 12, 2019 by Jonas Dupuich

After removing a large branch, you might find that the callus doesn’t form evenly around the wound. The best way to fix this is to reopen the wound. Here’s an example of a wound created one year ago after removing a large branch on a black pine.

Old wound on Japanese black pine

The top half of the wound is healing well but the bottom half has died back a bit.

Good callus formation on the top half of the wound

No callus

To encourage callus to form, I use a chisel, knife and knob cutter to carve away deadwood until I see signs of live wood. In this case, the live wood is yellow and white.

Live wood

Once I find the live wood, I expose a small amount of it all the way around the cut. The less that gets exposed, the better.

After reopening the wound

To keep the wound from drying out, I apply cut paste.

After applying cut paste

That’s it for now. I plan repeat the process next year as I expect the wound will close in about two years at the current rate.

Related Post

Bonsai Development Series #13: Balancing vigor

 

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Filed Under: Bonsai Development Tagged With: Black Pine

Previous Post: « Bonsai Development Series #13: Balancing vigor
Next Post: Bonsai Development Series #14: Sacrifice branches – the last mile »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lani says

    March 12, 2019 at 5:23 am

    Beautiful technique and explanation! Now I wonder, why did you leave a stub?

    • Alessandro says

      March 12, 2019 at 6:44 am

      Jin?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      March 12, 2019 at 9:17 am

      Good question Lani – I sometimes leave a stub in the middle of large cuts on pines to provide some support for the callus. I then remove the stub once the wound has mostly closed.

  2. Chris says

    March 12, 2019 at 6:14 pm

    I was wondering, instead of cutting the whole branch, why not leave living tissue (bark and cambium) from the branch and use it to cover the wound as in Bonsai Techniques I p. 46? It will speed the healing if the technique works. Have any tried it before?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      March 12, 2019 at 10:26 pm

      Hi Chris – good idea, I haven’t tried that approach. I can imagine it working for smaller cuts as it would be easier to line up the flap with the wound. Will be curious to hear if people have found advantages to the approach.

  3. Jeff Lahr says

    March 14, 2019 at 6:04 am

    Great explanation and illustration.

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      March 14, 2019 at 9:37 am

      Thanks Jeff!

  4. Gary McCarthy says

    March 19, 2019 at 12:40 pm

    Do you carve out at all the interior part of the callous to make it slightly concave so that as the callous rolls over it’s a little more flush with the rest of the trunk?

    • Jonas Dupuich says

      March 23, 2019 at 9:19 pm

      Hi Gary – that’s exactly right. Making the cuts about as deep as the callus is thick can yield a good result on wounds like this.

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