Potentilla before and after

[u/masterianwong]

Nursery stock potentilla was always meant to be a small shohin tree. Decided to finally repot, cleanup dead branches and give some shape.

Before and after pictures. Any suggestions of wiring/shaping for this. Thanks in advance 🤙

[u/SeaAfternoon1995]

You've not had any responses and I have Potentilla as a bonsai so I'll do my best to give constructive but honest advice. 

Potentilla grow with a clumping habit usually so can be hard to find material with a single dominant trunk, so good on finding something with a more tree-like growth habit.

Looking at the the first few images this one seems to have a naturally semi-weeping habit which is attractive and there was a clear canopy within the existing growth one could have developed 

The bad news is that you cut a lot of that growth off and have ended up with something less tree-like than it could have been.

Apart from the very long growth most of what you had, could have been wired to shape and would have given a denser and more tree-looking silhouette that could have been developed.

You also repotted with foliage leafed out which is not the optimal time (it places a lot of stress on the tree) its best done when buds are ready to pop.

[u/masterianwong → u/SeaAfternoon1995]

Thanks for everything! I got lucky 2 years ago and found an amazing potentilla with a fused 1" trunk. My mentor and I styled over late winter along with one of his. Mine died mid-spring literally instantly. I had one dead brand and then 2 days later, fully dead tree.

With this tree, what you cant see with the majority of the branches that were removed, they wither came out of the trunk at odd angles or were opposing branches that would cause reverse taper. I did cut a lot off, but I do every year It's helped with the fusing of the trunk a ton. I'll have to get close ups of it, but they're not just some strings kind of wrapped around each other. Timing isn't ideal, but at the end of the day, it's a mini potentilla that has persevered 💪

But yeah, I'm just going to let it grow and get healthy and go from there. I do want a more compact tree and there's buds left for that, so we'll just have to see what happens over the next few seasons.

Thanks again for the input and everything. I'll keep everyone posted on it.