My first, but not the last Ehretia

by Carl L. Rosner
(Margate City, NJ)

It all started about 1977; Marilyn and I had gone to Longwood Gardens to obtain some photos of flowers, which might be the subject matter for some of my paintings.

Even though I did obtain some good photos of Orchids, which later were turned into paintings, the one area of Longwood Gardens that intrigued me the most was the display of Bonsai.

At that time I never thought of Bonsai being a hobby that I would enjoy, however I always remembered how that display of miniature trees fascinated me.

At least 20 years passed since that intriguing visit to Longwood, when Marilyn and I decided to take a bus trip to the Philadelphia Flower Show. This was January of 1997, when we saw a sign at the Margate Library announcing the Bus trip. At the time I was commuting to Philadelphia, and the idea of a bus trip sounded nice, since I wouldn’t be driving.

On January 11, 1997 we entered the Flower show and spent a wonderful morning walking and enjoying the sights. Some how we ended up in the vendor area and there was this one little shop with a few small beautifully shaped trees.

Marilyn turned to me, and said, “Let me buy you this miniature tree”, since they were priced at $30.00, I agreed, and my heart did flip flops, I was really quite excited, and had no idea how to take care of this beautifully shaped tree.

Of course, I said, “yes”, with great trepidations since I had never grown any type of plants other than a few cacti. I was totally ignorant and unaware of the exciting journey on which I was about to embark!

We boarded the bus and left the Flower show with my new prize in a shopping bag and carefully managed to get my first tree home safely.

I placed the unknown tree on a shelf (which is called an Eterge’) by the window in our small living room. I have to admit that I never asked the young Asian woman for any instructions on the care of this tree. I was just too excited with my wife’s gift to think of anything else.

I turned to the computer and started to surf the Internet for anything on Bonsai, and was fortunate enough to find the Gardenweb Forum and Gallery.

Eventually, after reading many posts on the gallery I was able to identify my first tree on their gallery. It was called a Fukien Tea.

Thirteen years later, I still have my first tree. It has been through an awful lot of stress, putting up with the steep learning curve of my growing collection of Tropical trees. I completely lost the canopy branches and have been building the canopy ever since. But the Fukien tea has dropped hundreds of seeds, and I have a few Fukien tree from these seeds. In the year 2000 my first tree started to develop seeds, and I was able to take one of the seedlings and develop it into a tree. Since then many trees developed and were sold or given away.

In 2008 I had about 10 successful seedlings, and kept three. In 2009 I had 10, and still have nine of them growing and developing in Nursery containers. (I gave one away)

There have been occasional white fly attacks; eradicated easily with the soap and alcohol solution. The Fukien tea does not like the solution too much and I have to make sure I water spray them after a few minutes; otherwise, I have to move the affected trees into my ICU. Within a month the trees come back with vigorous growth.

My first tree picture was taken shortly after I obtained it in 1997. It was approximately four inches tall above the soil level.

It is now seven inches tall and I am still developing the canopy.