Beginner Gardening: Yukka plant - what this green coating?, 0 by tapla

tapla wrote:
If it was a bonsai tree that had been 'chopped' as a way to begin building taper into the future specimen it would be called 'cut paste', and it may be exactly that. It was put there to keep the cambium from dying back proximal (toward the roots) to the cut site. IOW, your plant was much taller at one time & they simply chopped off the top and waited for the multiple stems you see to appear.

The plant you see below was treated in the same way. It's normal growth habit is to produce long stems with a single rosette at the very end of each. To alter that growth habit, I chopped the plant off inches above the soil line after it had grown to about 40 cm tall. I happened to cover this wound site with waterproof wood glue to prevent the cambium from dying back & producing an ugly stub.

There is actually a special tool called a knob cutter http://www.mybonsaibuddy.com/Bonsai-Knob-Cutter-E.jpg that is designed to get into tight spots & remove stubs like you have. Since there is a good vascular connection to the new shoots, you can remove the treatment material with no problem, and even pare the stub back to a level even with the top of the top shoots. Eventually the stub would callus over & become unnoticeable, but not if you leave it.

Al

This message was edited Oct 2, 2011 1:33 PM