The seasonal interest can come from spring foliage colour, flowers, fruits, autumn colour, a fine winter image etc but many of these trees need a little more work than the standard run of the mill species.
One tree I wanted for many years was an oriental bittersweet to add that splash of intense autumn / winter colour when the yellow pod opens to expose the bright red fruit in the center. On a visit to Saruyama Towers one day I found, and was able to aquire, two !
Thanks to Peters advice it became apparent to get fruit the tree needs pollinating from a male of the species so one of these was procured as well....Now it all fell to timing - - the main tree is a beautiful large cascade and it started flowering weeks ago - the male though seemed to totally refuse to open any of the forming small green flowers...unbelievable ! a lady ready and the bloke doesn't want to play ball. I even put the trees together, entwining the two to see if the male would wake up....yesterday I saw the first male flowers open so now it is fingers crossed that the female flowers are still viable and havent been open too long
the small leaves are the female tree so ive put it under the males (there are two now, one in a small pot and one trained as a climber over the entrance gate to the bonsai area)
I hope this little fella has been saving his energy as there are 5-600 female flowers all very ripe and waiting !
At least it is easy to tell the two sexes apart
Only time will tell if i've been successful - if so the green berries will form at the base of each flower, if not they just drop off and that's it for another year.
While doing a bit of online research I found this link and it is the same tree 2 years before undergoing a spray fertilisation....
Hopefully the tree likes it with a real male as I fancy taking it to Noelanders in Jan 2016
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