Sementara sebagian paragraf berbahasa Indonesia adalah hasil pemahaman saya maka paragraf berbahasa Inggris adalah hasil copy-paste dari halaman bonsaibark.com dan adamaskwhy.wordpress.com – Ditampilkan di blog ini semata-mata untuk keperluan pengarsipan pengetahuan pribadi. Bukan untuk kepentingan dengan niat buruk dan lain-lain hal yang merugikan pemilik hak cipta sah berdasarkan hukum. Jika ditimbang postingan ini telah melanggar hukum dan hak cipta, informasikan kepada saya, agar bisa saya hapus dengan segera. Sumber asli di Energy Balancing #5: Defoliation; adamaskwhy.wordpress.com
2 terminologi pengaturan pertumbuhan:
- Pruning – adalah pemotongan dahan/ranting mati atau yang tumbuh liar mengganggu estetika
- Defoliage – adalah pemotongan sebagian atau keseluruhan daun. Adalah juga satu teknik untuk “mengelabui” tanaman seolah-olah sedang di penghujung musim kemarau sehingga “memperbanyak” waktu tumbuh. Keuntungan lainnya adalah meningkatan ramifikasi (ranting halus), kerapatan daun, dan memperkecil ukuran daun
This Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) has been partially defoliated. The first branch is too small relative to the rest of the tree, so the purpose of the defoliation is to speed up the development of the first branch while slowing down the development of the rest of the tree. This works because energy flow decreases in areas that have been defoliated. Conversely, because the energy from the roots has to go somewhere, energy flow increases where leaves are left on. The photos in this post are from Bonsai Today issue 103 (out of print). The article that the photos are taken from is by Hiroshi Takeyama.
….and this leads us quite nicely to the number one complaint about the ficus benjamina: if you cut a branch and don’t leave green, (a leaf or a visible bud) that whole branch will die. To answer this pet peeve let me remind everyone that both junipers and pine trees are exactly the same as the ficus benjamina in this characteristic.
And contrary to popular belief, you can defoliate a benjamina. You just have to make sure that you don’t damage the visible bud under the leaf.
Why would you need to defoliate one?
If you were showing the tree and you needed smaller leaves you would defoliate it.
The tree (most trees, actually) will respond by putting out twice as many leaves but they’ll only grow half as big.
This technique takes advantage of the way trees feed themselves.
The process is called photosynthesis. And, basically, a tree needs a certain square footage (or, in the rest of the world using the metric system, square centimeters, which just doesn’t sound as lyrical or poetic) of leaves to accomplish this process. When the leaves are damaged due to wind or insects (or my pruning shears) the tree responds by ramping up leaf production and growing as many as it can. But they’ll stop growing once that square footage is reached.
And they’ll have smaller leaves as a result.
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