Almost like magic. This wild and wonderful mugo pine showed up on facebook a few weeks ago. It was posted by Bonsai Creativo School and Academy.
Wild, wonderful and no so traditional
There are at least two things that come to mind when I look at this wild mugo pine. First, that it represents a break with traditional bonsai styles, particularly traditional Japanese bonsai. It just doesn’t look like what bonsai used to look like not too long ago.
The second thing about it is that it’s a mugo pine. It wasn’t too long ago that the only pines you’d see as bonsai were Japanese whites and blacks. Especially in Japan. Gradually, as bonsai spread to the west, other varieties started showing up. Now, mugos are becoming quite common, and for good reason; their needles are small, they are tough, and, over time they can show a lot of character (as you can readily see when you look at this magically unique and dynamic tree).
Pirates
At least one blog has been pirating our posts, lock stock and barrel; but without our links and without any attribution to bonsai bark, or Stone Lantern. If you are reading this on any website or blog that is not ours, and is not attributed to us, then it has been pirated. Please visit us at bonsaibark.com. Thank you.
Peaceful Lagoon, our third in a series of plantings from Toshio Kawamoto’s Saikei classic. The trees are five to twenty-year-old Japanese black pines. The pot (Tokoname) is similar to the ones in the previous two landscapes, though quite a bit larger.
An invitation
The purpose of this section is to show how to create a saikei that depicts a peaceful lagoon just off the ocean. The photo taken together with the drawings (below), create the impression that the author is inviting you to duplicate his work.
Attention to detail
If you look at all the elements: the rocks, the trees, the moss, the gravel (water) and the white sand (foam), you can see that their placement and their relative sizes (scale) creates a near perfect effect. Everything makes sense (except maybe the size of the pine needles, and somehow that’s easy to overlook).
A transporting effect
A good saikei almost convinces you that it’s a large landscape in nature. It’s easy to imagine that you are standing on a large rock on the bank of the lagoon, and that the small gap in the back opens to the ocean. The wind, which blows off the ocean bends all the small trees toward the lagoon. You can almost feel it in your hair and taste the salt air.
Front schemata. The pot is 37? x 20? (94cm x 51cm) unglazed oval by Tokoname. There are 10 Japanese black pines that range from 5 to 8 inches (13cm to 20cm) tall. There are nine river rocks (numbered above and below) that range considerably in size. The soil is regular bonsai soil (he doesn’t say which regular bonsai soil, but the Japanese almost always use akadama or an akadama mix for conifers). The other materials are river sand and white sand.
Pirates
At least one blog has been pirating our posts, lock stock and barrel; but without our links and without any attribution to bonsai bark, or Stone Lantern. If you are reading this on any website or blog that is not ours, and is not attributed to us, then it has been pirated. Please visit us at bonsaibark.com. Thank you.
From left to right: unidentified grass, Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii), flowering ‘Nippon Bells’ (Shortia uniflora) companion plant, suiseki (viewing stone), another unidentified companion, and a very stately Needle juniper (Juniperus ridgida). By Masao Komatsu.
Group displays
Each group display in this post is by a single artist. Each display shows mastery in two art forms: bonsai and bonsai display. The photos come from an article by Saburo Kato in Bonsai Today issue 43.
Why transplant in the fall?
If you transplant in the fall your trees can take full advantage of the next growing season. If you transplant in the spring (that’s when most people do it), by the time the tree recovers, you’ve lost part of the growing season.
Why not transplant in the fall?
If you have an early winter and your bonsai haven’t fully recovered from transplanting, then you risk serious damage (or worse). If you rootprune heavily, the risk goes up. If you want to play it safe, fall transplant only those trees that need light to moderate root pruning.
Look familiar?
My apologies if things seems a little redundant around here; this is the third time we’ve shown this Shohin Japanese black pine. Fortunately, it’s a decent little tree and worthy of one more look.
The mystery has been solved
The reason you’re seeing it now is that it hasn’t been attributed yet. That’s because we didn’t know whose tree it was. Now we do. Here’s the proof:
Still a mystery
I lifted this shohin black pine is from the American Shohin-Bonsai Association gallery. I couldn’t find who the artist is anywhere (and their contact link isn’t working), so I figured if I used it for our contest, someone would let me know. No such luck, so it’s still a mystery to me.
No longer Mr. Second Place!
However. two people did answer some of the of questions correctly (at least I think they were correct; the site doesn’t say anything, so I’m guessing). Of the two Vinicius Costa (formerly known as ‘Mr. Second Place’) was first, so he’s the winner. Congrats Vinicius!
I’d still love to know
Meanwhile, I’m not completley comfortable posting unattributed images (or text), so I’d still love to know who’s the owner/artist is. Anyone?
A unique technique
The illustrations and photos used here are from an article by Kusida Matsuo that originally appeared in Bonsai Today issue 20 (out of print). The unique technique featured is for shaping cuttings taken from seedlings. Though Japanese black pine are used here, the technique should work on any number of species.
In this simple and clear video, Brent Walston of Evergreen Gardenworks provides an excellent lesson in grafting scions onto root stock. In this case the scion is a Japanese black pine varietal called Hayabusa (Pinus thunbergii ‘Hayabusa’), which is a dwarf cork barked cultivar (nishiki kuro matsu) with very dense foliage. The root stock is your basic Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii).
If you want to know how this seemingly miraculous recovery happened, keep reading (you might want to take a look at yesterday’s post first if you haven’t already).
Uh oh. Looks like a goner. This photo is from an article in Bonsai Today issue 9 (long out of print). The artist and author is K. Onishi. The tree is a Japanese Black pine (Pinus thunbergii).
The cause of the stress is a late freeze, though dessication (drying out) might produce the same effect.
Bonsai Bark is written mostly by Wayne Schoech, publisher, Stone Lantern Publishing and former editor and publisher of Bonsai Today magazine. The idea is to promote and expand the bonsai universe by offering pithy commentary and occasional barking on its art, science and culture; with an emphasis on how-to projects.
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