Bonsai Gallery of Walter Pall: European Larch nr. 5

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European larch (Larix decidua) #5

90 cm high
Around 300 years old
Pot Japanese, Tokoname
from a tree which was collected in Austria in 1998

This is my biggest larch. It is just a bit too big for my perosnal taste, but that's how I found it. It is the famous larch with the stone ax. This is the story: I went to the Alps to collect in 1998. Next to a road at the timberline I found this tree sitting on a huge rock. The rock was big like a house and hard to climb. But on top was a nice flat area on which the larch sat. Wehn I was tired worikng on the tree after an hour I set down and looked at my surrounding. The spot is only 10 miles from the place where the man in the ice was found. I had the feeling to sit on the rock 6000 years back. This would have been an ideal spot to sit if I was in the business of mugging people. I could see everything that came down the passs or up, but they could not see me. I would have a stone ax and jump from the rock onto the lonely wanderer. Was a mugger sitting up here 6000 years ago waiting for the man coming down the pass, but the man never came? Well, after I got the tree safely off the rock I went back home. There I loosened the rootball to get it into a pot. And out came this stone which looked somewhat different. It actually looked like a neolithic stone ax at close inspection. Could the tree be 6000 years old? No way, but the stone ax could well be or much older. How did it get into the roo ball. Or did the roootball get over the stone ax? Anyway, the stone ax lies on the soil surface of the larch ever since. It will be the ideal accent object one day when the tree will be exhibited. Someone will have to make me a daiza. In September 2009 I passed the larch with the ax on to the next generation. Mauro Stemberger wanted this tree since years. Now he got it. For me it always was just too big. I could not carry it alone and even had serious problems carrying it with an assistant. I could not photograph it well and I certainly could never dream of exhibiting it. Mauro will change it, for sure, he will make an Italian bonsai of it. He promised to provide images of the changes. A chapter is closed, but a couple of new ones are opened. I see these pictures with some sadness, but It is not that I just gave the tree away.