Ezo Spruce by Any Other Name… 6/25/14

One glance at this Ezo spruce and you know it belongs to Walter Pall. Walter sometimes refers to this natural looking untouched-by-human-hands style as ‘naturalistic bonsai,’ though if you go to Walter’s Bonsai Adventures blog where this photo is from, you’ll see just how touched-by-human-hands it actually was. And just how accomplished Walter is at turning pedestrian bonsai into naturalistic gems.

Ezo spruce are sometimes referred to as Jezo or Yezo spruce (Picea jezoensis or Picea yezoensis) and even Sakhalin spruce, though that’s a really a different species (Picea glenii). Most (or perhaps all) of the specimen quality Ezo bonsai in Japan and most likely in the world, were collected on Sakhalin, an island north of Japan. Prior to WWII the collecting of Ezo was promoted by the late Saburo Kato and his father Tomekichi of Mansei-en. After WWII the island was annexed to Russia and, as far as I know, no collecting has taken place there since then.

Though no doubt some people are now growing Ezo in the U.S., because they take so long to develop that prized old-age-look, finding good stock is difficult. This is compounded by the fact that importing from Asia is so tricky. Perhaps that’s why only one of the photos in this post is from here in the U.S.

 

This is not the first time we’ve shown this remarkable old Ezo spruce with it’s unusual shari. It’s a 2011 Kokufu winner. The photo was taken by Jonas at Bonsai Tonight at the 2011 Taikan-ten Exhibition.

 

Captial Bonsai refers to this bonsai as the ‘Clinton Ezo.’ In 1998 Japanese Prime Minster Keizo Obuchi gave it to President Clinton during his visit to Japan. There’s more to the story on the Capital Bonsai blog.

 

This photo shows the result of another radical Ezo transformation by Walter Pall. If you look at what Walter started with, you’ll see what I mean. 

 

We’ve shown this now famous Michael Hagedorn Ezo spruce at least twice here on bark. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tell that, rather than a slab (let alone a pot), the tree is growing on a board.

 

This wonderful museum quality bonsai treasure by the true master of Ezo spruce bonsai is marked down from 34.95 to 22.00 at Stone Lantern. This comes to only 16.50 with our current (but soon to end) 25% off book sale.