Quercus grisea – Gray Oak Bonsai – Colorado Rocky Mountain Bonsai

I was first introduced to Gray Oaks – Quercus Grisea when I first visited Cho Bonsai website. Alvaro Arciniegas is the owner and he has numerous species of Western yamadori for sale on his site. I especially like his deciduous trees on his site. I purchased a gray oak from about three years ago. I have purchased three Gray Oaks from him and they range in size from a one hand small tree to a 2 hand tree and that is pretty large in size. All three of my trees have very nice old gnarly deadwood that Dan Robinson would love.

This is the first Gray Oak I purchased and is pretty much styled. Bjorn Bjorholm said I did a good job on styling it and said it should be potted with the left side of the tree raised up to see the deadwood just above the soil. I have taken photos of the tree with the left the side of raised as Bjorn suggested.

Here are some observations of this particular species of oaks:

The trees seems to keep its leaves during the winter here in Colorado with out them changing color. In early spring about half the leaves just dry up and fall off. The rest of the leaves drop off when the tree buds out. No color just dry up and fall off.
Old branches are very brittle and tend to crack on you.
Cracked branches will be dead by the next spring. They may or may not die immediately after cracking the branch, they will be dead by spring though.
Small branches may die off if you move them around to much, so decide ahead of time where you want to move the branch.
Gray Oaks back bud really well.
Mature bark looks really old. Young bark looks smooth.
Wiring old mature barked branches does not seem to work. I wired and used a piece of rebar/pullies to move a large branch. Three years latter I took the anchor wires and rebar off and branch just popped right back to where it was.
Younger branches seem to stay where wired.
Gray Deadwood is a main feature of these trees. This tree has a deadwood bowl just above the soil. No other deadwood on this tree. My smallest tree is mostly deadwood. The other tree has a lot of deadwood on it. Each tree is different on the deadwood.
The tree seems to drop and kill off branches for no reason.
My three trees seems to like water even though they came of a semi-arid desert.
Have not seen any insect activity on these trees in Colorado.
The tree in this article has a lot of acorns on it right now. Last year it had a few acorns and they seemed to have dropped off the tree before they matured.
The leaves on my Gray Oaks are all around 2″ long, very small for an Oak tree.

I highly recommend Gray Oak for Bonsai.

Quercus grisea by Wikipedia

New 05-03-2021:

The tree was hit by a hail storm about a year ago and stripped a lot of the leaves off it. It was allowed to grow out and I did rewire some of the new growth on the tree. I did take a couple of photos of the tree with no leaves. There not the best photos but I think you can see the ramification on the tree just fine.

Quercus Grisea – Gray Oak Bonsai Ramification

New 07-27-2020:

The tree was planted into a Sara Rayner pot this spring and it has responded well. The tree was hit by a lot of smaller hail stones during a bad thunderstorm and was damaged before shade cloth went up. The tree did loose a bunch of leaves. As of now the tree still has quite a few leaves and even has some acorns still on it. This is the first year the acorns have not dropped off the tree. They are very tiny. Moss was added to the tree and is looking really nice. I did remove a few new shoots from the tree and did incorporate some of the newer branches in the design. The longest branch continued to die back and now is now a deadwood feature. Gray Oaks will kill off branches for no reason. No bug activity detected either. Moss is now being protected by large 1/4″ wide wire mesh allowing it to receive more sun then the window screen material was letting in.

New 02-11-2020:

The tree was allowed to grow unchecked in 2019 and I incorporated many of the new branches into its current design. I was finally able to lower the left side of the tree with a couple of newer branches. These will be allowed grow and thicken up. International Bonsai Master Larry Jackel saw the tree after I was finished with it and said he really liked this tree. I am starting to look around for a pot for it. Its growing in a 15″ Anderson pot. A couple of the newer branches are out of place in the photos below.