European Hornbeam - capinus betulus

I thought I get a picture of this tree just before the buds break.  The tree was collected as a bare stump back in 2001, with the centre part already quite rotten.  I simply removed the rotten wood with a wire brush, no additional carving was done.  All the branches were grown from scratch.

The first photo shows the tree 2 years after collection, just before I cut back most the growth to start training it as a bonsai.

Ten years on