Description
The Elm family of trees is world wide a fairly large group of species and the UK hosts a handful of them. Pretty much every species in the family makes for good bonsai in their natural characteristics and the U. glabra is no exception.
The Scots or Wych elm is noted for being able to withstand easily coastal locations. As mentioned above the natural growth habits are excellent for bonsai. Combine that with being very tough, quick growing, easy to grow and versatile and you have a great bonsai subject. There are a number of, mainly naturally occurring varieties.
This piece of raw material will have been wild collected and whilst it has been a bonsai quite a while it has yet had much training and shaping. The trunk has a major attractive feature with what is certainly a naturally created shari. It also has interesting movement and some taper. The surface roots are also a major feature of the bonsai and, whilst they do not represent a conventional nebari, they do make an interesting characteristic that helps to give the impression of age. The trunk shari continues up into the apex of the tree where there are a few short jins that are not particularly conspicuous or refined. There is quite a lot of new twig growth that gives plenty of options in branch and canopy development in the future. The bonsai has a height of 46cm. and spread of 35cm. Those surface roots are 18cm. across with the trunk being a diam. of 4cm. above this. The pot is a plastic bonsai trainer measuring 40x28x6cm. It makes for an interesting and potentially rewarding bit of bonsai material that will quickly and easily reward some care and good husbandry.
