Wax plum, because the fragrance is like plum blossoms, color, texture like yellow wax and get the name, and because of its proud frost and snow blooming in the cold winter wax moon, so it is also called wax plum. It also has aliases such as yellow plum, yellow plum blossom, fragrant plum, wax wood, Su'er, snow flower, dry branch plum and so on.
Wax plum is the traditional bonsai plant of our country, its tree posture is beautiful, the roots are elegant, the sparse shadow and oblique branches bloom with wax yellow flowers, bright and brilliant, the sweet fragrance is even more intoxicating, especially warm in the cold winter.
Yelu Chucai, a literati in the Yuan Dynasty, once used the poem "The branches are horizontal jasper is naturally thin, and the buds are broken and extraordinarily fragrant" to describe wax plum.
1. Forms and varieties
Chimonanthus praecox is a deciduous shrub of the family Wax Plum with a clumped, grayish-brown trunk and pores. Leaves simple, ovate-elliptic or ovate-lanceolate, apex acuminate, base rounded or broadly wedge-shaped, entire, dark green.
The flowers grow from the leaf axils of annual branches, in pairs or opposite to the leaf buds, the flowers are 2 to 4 cm in diameter or larger, the perianth is long in outer petals, yellow with wax, slightly transparent;The inner petals are short, purple or purple at the base, and have a strong sweet smell. Winter or early spring precedes leaf opening. The fruit trays are nearly lignified, and the achenes are jar-shaped or obovate-elliptic.
Flowers of wax plums. 
The fruit of the wax plum.
Wax plum is the traditional famous flower of our country, in the long-term cultivation to cultivate a large number of excellent varieties, its flower color has pure yellow, golden yellow, light yellow, dark yellow and yellow-white, light white, silver-white, red, etc., the more famous are plain wax plum, sandalwood wax plum, tiger hoof wax plum, mouth wax plum, dog tooth wax plum and other traditional varieties, as well as queen wax plum, tiger hoof red silk wax plum, golden pan jade wax plum, silver bell wax plum, white lotus wax plum, sword red wax plum and other famous varieties.
Wax plum proud snow. 2. Modeling techniques
The propagation of wax plum can be used by sowing, dividing, cuttings, striping, grafting and other methods. Among them, the grafting method is the most commonly used, generally using the raw seedlings of 'Dogtooth Wax Plum' or Wax Plum as rootstock, and grafting by cutting, leaning, budding, ventral grafting, splitting and other methods.
The old pile of wax plum is vigorous and simple, and the root stem is peculiar. According to the specific form, the body of the tree can make a variety of bonsai such as straight dry type, oblique dry type, horizontal dry type, curved dry type, dry dry type, split dry type, hanging branch type, attached stone type, water and drought type, jungle type, etc. For young trees, they can be shaped by pruning, changing the planting angle, and plucking.
The base of wax plum is easy to germinate tiller seedlings, and if the root tiller seedlings are constantly cut, irregular pimples will form at the roots. Therefore, the old wax plum stump that has grown for many years has pimples in the roots, commonly known as "wax plum pimples" or "pimple plum" and "turtle eggs".
Its shape is peculiar and quaint, like strange stones and strange peaks, it can be regarded as a mountain stone when making bonsai, and the branches of wax plum are born from the "mountain stone", the two are accompanied by a strange and interesting one.
In addition, some branches can also be stripped of the old skin, expose the woody layer, and apply stone sulfur mixture to make relics to increase the charm of simplicity and vigor. You can also brush black alum (ferrous sulfate) on the relics to make it dark in color, as if it has been scorched and reborn, and its tenacious vitality is amazing.
Expensive and rare is not expensive and complicated, expensive old is not expensive and tender, expensive thin is not expensive and fat, expensive is not expensive to open, expensive oblique is not expensive", "to the song is beautiful, straight is no posture;Sparse is beautiful, dense is no rhyme;"The beauty of the plum, the regularity of the no scene" and so on are the ancients of the plum appreciation criteria, these standards can also be used for the creation of wax plum bonsai, but according to the plant characteristics of wax plum.
For example, the twigs of wax plum are straight and straight, and we must not blindly pursue the so-called "beauty of bending", and make the twigs bend and bend, like earthworms, which not only violates the laws of nature, but also is not beautiful. In addition, due to the hard branches of wax plum, it is not suitable to make a weeping shape.
The branches of wax plum bonsai are mostly made into a natural style, and its pan binding shape can be carried out from May to August when the new branches have not yet lignified, and attention should be paid to controlling watering before operation to further soften the branches and facilitate the modeling operation.
With the development of the times, the shape of wax plum bonsai has become more and more abundant, and it has also absorbed the characteristics of pine and cypress and other miscellaneous bonsai, and made the crown of the tree into a cloud flake, and when it blooms, the dense flowers are full of branches, giving people a feeling of vitality and vigor.
It should be pointed out that no matter what shape of wax plum bonsai, it should not be chaotic, and it should be better to be comfortable, so that the work does not lose the species characteristics of wax plum, but also has the cultural attributes of plum.
3. Maintenance management
Wax plum likes a sunny environment, can be placed outdoors in a sunny place to maintain, even in the middle of summer, do not shade, watering to see dry and wet, to avoid potting soil water. During the growing period from April to October, the well-decomposed thin liquid fertilizer was applied once every half month, and the flower bud differentiation period from July to August was applied once every 7 to 10 days, and the compound fertilizer was applied once before winter. However, do not fertilize during the flowering period, so as not to cause flower and bud drop.
The germination of wax plum is strong, resistant to pruning, and the flower proverb has the saying that "wax plum does not lack branches". After the flowering, a pruning is carried out in time, and a part of the perennial branches is cut off to encourage the branches to germinate small side branches, and the thick elongated branches and other branches that affect the shape (especially the thick branches that germinate from the base) should also be cut off to maintain the graceful shape of the tree.
It is also possible to re-prune the aging branches according to the shape of the tree to facilitate their renewal and rejuvenation, but pay attention to the position and direction of the terminal buds on the remaining branches. During the growth period, attention should be paid to the new shoots of the current year to promote more branches, and can change the direction of the branches, so that the branches grow thicker, more buds, and more flowers. In the growing season, for some new branches that need to be bent in the current year, they can be properly pulled with hemp rope or brown rope, and necessary pruning should be carried out according to the nature and growth of the tree.
Wax plum bonsai is repotted once every 2 to 3 years, generally after the spring flowering, and the potting soil can be loose and fertile, well-drained sandy soil.
The following are some wax plum bonsai, please enjoy the simple beauty of wax plum:
Written by Bao Feng).
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