Old Bristlecone Pines can exhibit outstanding deadwood. Some of it is gray and weathered – other bits look freshly sandblasted. Here are some shots of deadwood from along the Methuselah Trail in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest. Bristlecone pine deadwood Dead branch Twisting deadwood
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Most ancient forest
By far the best Bay Island Bonsai field trip of the year was our visit to the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest in California’s White Mountain range. The slow-growing Bristlecone Pines are a marvel – and this is the best place to see them. Along the Methuselah Trail alone, 11 of the 19 known 4,000+ year-old […]
Bristlecone pine
The name “Bristlecone Pine” refers to a cluster of slow-growing pines with bristles on their cones. The longest lived of these, the Great Basin Bristlecone Pine, Pinus longaeva, is native to isolated patches in Nevada, Utah, and California. Many of the most ancient cluster in the White Mountain range, east of the Owens Valley and […]
Limber pine
The Limber pine (Pinus flexilis) knows what it’s like to be second best. Well known for growing alongside more “notable” pines like the Foxtail or Bristlecone, the Limber rarely gets the spotlight. Which is too bad as it’s a remarkable variety. The Limber can eke out a living where only a handful of trees can […]
Deadwood story
In nature, animals, insects, rocks, wind, snow and self-sacrifice expose heartwood to the elements creating the oftentimes beautiful shapes and patterns we recognize as “deadwood” in bonsai. Deadwood always suggests a story – the cause of the trauma to a tree that killed part of it off. Some of these stories are more compelling than […]