How to Take an Exceptional Old Bonsai & Make It Extraordinary

This Ezo spruce (Picea jezoenis) belongs to Walter Pall. The hand built tray accentuates its untouched natural look. The tree was originally collected in Hokkaido, Japan sometime before 1950 and is over 100 years old. The tray (Walter calls it a stone) is by Dietmar Popp. This photo and the rest in this post are from Walter’s facebook photos. In addition to his excellent bonsai, I like Walter Pall’s instructive step-by-step presentations (you can find them on facebook and on his Bonsai Adventures blog). It’s like you’re standing right there looking over his shoulder. Or in this case, Thomas’s shoulder … Continue reading How to Take an Exceptional Old Bonsai & Make It Extraordinary

Flowering Bonsai – Some of Us Can Dream

Sabamiki and uro from the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum. Aside from this magnificent old Ume’s overall power and beauty, there are a several things that might catch your eye: the flowers and buds, the aged bark (Ume bark develops an aged look fairly fast) and the hollowed out trunk (sabamiki). If you look closely you can also see several uro (small hollows that are left on deciduous trees where branches have rotted and fallen off, though bonsai uro may well be man made). This winter to end all winters seems like a good (if a little perverse) time to look … Continue reading Flowering Bonsai – Some of Us Can Dream

A Bonsai Story (Sometimes You Just Can’t Tell)

You can get some idea that this might be a pretty big bonsai from this photo (the little leaf at the bottom helps). But how big, you could only guess. This and the other photos in this post are from Peter Tea Bonsai. I started this post with the title Sometimes You Just Can’t Tell. That’s because I wanted to talk about how difficult it is to tell just how big some bonsai are without something to indicate scale. In photos that is. Now you might not think this is a big deal, but it is. Photos, even when there … Continue reading A Bonsai Story (Sometimes You Just Can’t Tell)

Dragon 3

Highly distinctive, exceptionally powerful and almost grotesque. When I first glanced at this tree, there was just a massive trunk with great taper and one of the largest sabamiki (the hollow in the trunk) ever. Then the face appeared (purely a mental projection by the way). I think the solution to this dilemma is to relax the gaze and take in a the whole tree and the space around it. Or simply don’t bother projecting. The photos of the trees that Robert Steven sent from the recent BCI convention in China are so good that they’re worth a third post … Continue reading Dragon 3