Today marks the first day of the 2026 collection season for me. The weather has been unusually warm with highs in the 70s and even the 80s over the past couple of weeks. This always causes me a bit of concern about the potential for the trees to wake up too early. January (particularly late January) is typically the coldest month of the year in Southeast Louisiana and if trees wake up early, they will have to be protected from deep freezes in the coming weeks. It will also weaken them during the growing season due to not meeting full dormancy requirements.
That being said, native trees collected locally tend to have a way of knowing when to wake up and not be fooled by the ups and downs that we experience in this part of the country. On the contrary, those that are not native here (like my pomegranates) have already decided to start budding out. Oh well.
This particular tree is a new species to my collection, but a fairly common one to encounter in areas that remain damp (but not saturated). It is a swamp chestnut oak, Quercus michauxii, also referred to as the swamp white oak, or in these parts, just white oak (not to be confused with the actual white oak, Quercus alba).
Swamp chestnut have a flaky white bark, very large acorns, and large serrated leaves. Unlike many oaks, the mature flaky white bark actually develops on even younger tress, which is an attractive feature for bonsai. However, the large leaves will be a challenge, requiring a large tree to keep them in proportion. As you can see, this one meets that requirement with a base about 8 inches in diameter.
From my research, I cannot find any examples of others using this species for bonsai. One reason is likely the large leaves, but I suspect that they can be reduced. Unlike many oaks, the swamp chestnut loses all of its leaves in the Winter, so a nice Winter silhouette can hopefully be developed despite the large leaves. Another reason for their low prevalence in the community may simply be that they just have not been experimented with yet. Unlike in China and Japan, bonsai in America is still very young and their are numerous native species to experiment with. It is an exciting time to be in this hobby!
The Collection
This collection was very easy. The saturated soil (not ideal for this species) meant that the tree did not send down a thick taproot. It took maybe two minutes with the sawzall to cut a circle around the base and sever the small taproot. Here is the tree after collection. You may notice that there are actually two trees here - both are swamp chestnut. The small one on the right will be used to make a literati-style tree. I will post about that one separately.
Preparation
The post-collection preparation was also fairly easy on this tree, as unlike others from this area, it was not completely tangled up with invasive privet roots. There are quite a few radial roots and as you can see, the taproot is quite small relative to the trunk size. This is in contrast to trees collected in drier areas, which tend to put much of their root-making energy into diving deep into the ground for reliable soil reserves. Here is the root system before washing:
I used the water hose to clean off the native soil, working my way inwards from the outside of the root system towards the inside. If you go the opposite direction, it puts too much weight on the fine roots as they are left holding onto wet soil on the ends of the roots without any inner soil to hold them together. Here is the bottom of the rootball after some cleaning. Most of the roots you see belong to the tree. The ones with red arrows pointing at them are invasive privet roots that needs to be removed.
As I was washing off the rootball, this critter scurried out. I do not know my amphibians, but I suppose it is some kind of newt? I quickly placed it in a safe, moist area.
When preparing collected trees, it is common to find that they have developed “layers” of roots at different planes. The hope is that the highest layer near the future nebari has sufficient radial fine roots to enable you to safely remove the lower layers without harming the tree’s survival chances. This image shows what I mean - there are two distinct layers and thankfully the top layer is dense. I marked the line where I will cut the roots.
And here it is after the chop - not too bad!
Finally, I spent some time removing dead roots and roots not belonging to the tree, cleaned up the edges of large severed roots with sharp pruners, gave it an anti-fungal spray, and a final wash. Here is the result:
I then built a cedar grow box for the tree and potted it in a 50/50 mix of expanded shale/clay and pine bark. Tieing it down was quite difficult - the wood is very heavy and there were no large roots to which I could tie down the tree securely. I ended up using guy wires to secure it, which worked. The photo at the top shows the final result.
What’s Next
I’ll mostly leave it alone for the rest of the growing season, aside from rubbing buds off the base. Until there is no longer a risk of freezing temperatures, I will keep it off the bench and on the ground. I have high hopes that this tree will survive and be strong this year, but I also don’t know what to expect from this species. If it survives, I will eventually remove the flying roots that distract from the nebari of the tree.