Please criticize my Fukien Tea tree... I hope the pictures post and are viewable.

I purchased it in early March of this year at a good, but general purpose, nursery for $15 (US). I keep it indoors under an LED grow light (produces no heat). It's quite happy, putting out masses of flowers about once a month. I went on vacation in early May and came back to 5 new branches that were each a foot long (30cm, but lanky because the grow light was not shining on them).
When I purchased it the leaves were so dense that you really couldn't see much of the branch structure except that the trunk had some curvature. I did some defoliation to evaluate rammification and was a bit horrified at what I found. There's little branch stubs remaining everywhere and in most places multiple branches growing from the same point. It feels like I have a lot of work ahead of me. Fukien Teas can withstand complete defoliation, right? That seems like the only way I can really see what the heck is going on in there and get the tools in where they need to be.
The trunk is thin for the height and has no flare - I suspect it was an air-layered cutting. There really isn't much taper to the trunk either, I think this is due to the number of branches that were left to grow very close together.










Thanks for looking and commenting.

Bunsen33 wrote:

It feels like I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Yup.

Just a few ideas:
- Remove whorled/multiple branches until you have two you wish to work with. Develop from there,.
- If the knobs are too large or create reverse taper, I'd cut them back & start over with new shoots.
- If you want the straight trunk, select branches that allow it look proportional to a tall straight tree & remove the rest.
- For taper on the trunk you have, you can
A: allow sacrificial shoots to grow at the base & periodically prune back.
B: Attempt thread grafting (same idea as sacrificial shoots, but you get to choose where you want them).
- David Cortizas has some good videos about thread grafting for mame size bonsai:
Part 1: intro and info
Part 2: demo
- For a bigger trunk, put into a larger container & let it grow wild & crazy until you reach desired trunk size. Then cut back where you want the taper/curves to start. Repeat. (The main trunk areas won't thicken as much until the section/sections above it approach the same diameter. Example: If you cut back a 1" trunk to a 1/4" branch, the 1" trunk won't increase much until that branch catches up in size. This applies to primary & secondary branches as well).
- If the top section has more interest with branches & taper, you may try an air layer.

I was studying for a professional certification exam yesterday and used working on my Fukien tea tree as a reward/break for every 30 pages I read.

The 1st step was to remove a good amount of the leaves so that I could see enough of the branch structure/mess to make decisions.
Before:


After partial defoliation:





Decision were made, things were pruned and cleaned up.




I think it is looking better, but I had to stop working on it to start making dinner. The new shoot that is sticking up from the top like an antenna will be removed once some leaves start to grow back. There are a few places where there's still too many branches/nubs growing from the same point. The trunk still has some reverse tapering and the tree overall (excluding the antenna) is a bit too tall for the trunk girth - 9" tall and 1/2" trunk. In the future I might do an airlayering between the 2nd & 3rd branch.