The Story of a Silverberry

by

Ernie Kuo

Silverberry, Elaeagnus pungens, is an evergreen shrub. In the ground, it is a sprawling plant that grows to a height of 6 to 15 feet. Its foliage has silvery dots on the top side and brown dots on the under side. The silvery dots of the top side come off with rubbing. New leaves come with brown rusty dots on both top and bottom sides, thus providing a perfect camouflage for spider mites. The branches too, are covered with rusty brown dots. The flowers are silvery white and fragrant. The fruits are silvery at first, eventually brown. Silverberry has nitrogen fixing nodules in the root system, so it is not necessary to feed heavily with nitrogenous fertilizer. One author of a landscape book describes its growth habit as follows: " In its natural form a genuine horror; long shoots wander in disarray from all areas of the plant; best described as a rather unkempt, dense, spreading, more or less thorny shrub; needs a good tailor."(1)

Silverberry is a tough and hardy plant which makes it a good bonsai material. I got this silverberry from a bonsai friend, who used it as a landscape material in her backyard. The silverberry grew fast and furious in her backyard for over fifteen years. Finally, in 1993, she got tired of having to prune it back every year; so she dug it up and threw it into the foliage heap. After the silverberry had been dug up for over a week, she suddenly thought that the stump could be bonsai material. So she planted the stump, which had just a little bit of foliage, into pumice. The silverberry lived. To make a long story short, I traded a California juniper for the silverberry.

When the silverberry first arrived in my backyard in 1994, there was no foliage below a height of 36 inches. Part of the trunk died back perhaps because large branches were pruned severely, leaving no foliage. I let the stump stay in the large plastic container while I tried to force it to bud lower on the trunk. To do this, I pruned the top growth back to just a couple of leaves every few weeks. Within a year, I got all the branches I needed. I transplanted the tree into the present pot and started to build the branch structures. The angular growth habit of the branches made it an ideal candidate to be trained by the clip-and-grow or directional pruning method.

For those who are not familiar with the clip-and-grow method of training a bonsai, I will describe it briefly. In essence, all the long and uninteresting branches on the raw material are pruned back to leave some foliage. This serves to force back budding so that more pruning may be performed later when foliage emerges from the back bud. This goes on until the primary branch is shortened to the desired length. Then, the foliage growing in the desired direction is allowed to grow and then pruned back to the last pair of foliage. This procedure is repeated again and again until the desired shape of the tree is attained.

This method of training is best used for fast growing trees like this silverberry. Every change in direction of the branches in this bonsai is achieved by pruning. Wiring has not been used at all.

The advantages of using this method are as follows:

1. There will not be any wiring scars on the branches.

2. The change in direction of the branches will look more natural.

3. The structure of the tree, once achieved, will be there forever.

I should have taken some pictures as the tree developed, but I have not done so. I tend to procrastinate in taking pictures of non-conifer raw material, partly because I am not sure if the tree is going to work out or not. Picture 1 shows the silverberry in full bloom on October 10, 1998. Picture 2 shows the tree in October 2004.It stands 24 inches from the soil line.

(1) Manual of Woody Landscape Plants, by Michael A. Dirr, Stipes Publishing Company 1990.