At a glance, or even on closer inspection, you might think this is a Zelkova. After all, Zelkova is the most common broom style bonsai and the leaves even look Zelkovish. However, it’s not. It’s an American elm that belongs to Suthin Sukosolvisit.
You don’t see that many American elm bonsai (or American elms at all for that matter, thanks to Dutch elm disease). And you certainly don’t see many, if any, American elm bonsai as well developed as this one. We have Suthin Sukosolvisit to thank for this.
Just in case you don’t know him, Suthin is one of the great American bonsai artists (Suthin is originally from Thailand, but has made the U.S. his home for a long time now). We’ve featured Suthin’s bonsai here many times and will continue to feature his trees until Bark draws its last digital breath.
Here are Suthin’s website and his facebook feed.
This fall foliage photo provides a better look at the individual leaves. One of the reasons you don’t see very many American elm bonsai is leaf size. Full size American elm’s leaves are about 5 inches (13 cm), so some serious leaf reduction* is in order. It’s a tedious task, but no problem for an accomplished and patient bonsai artist like Suthin.
On display (U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition?). The sparser leaves in the photo at the top of this post have the look of spring. Here the fuller flusher foliage look more like summer.
* The most tedious leaf reduction task is defoliation. In the early summer (here in the north country at least ) each leaf is individually cut off. A new crop of smaller leaves soon follows (this is true of Maples for example, but did Suthin really cut off each of the multitude of leaves on this elm? )
No doubt a beautiful bonsai, but to my eye it doesn’t look like an elm, much less the beautiful fountain of an American elm.
Hi Maggie,
Yeah. Good point. But I supposed Suthin has earned the right to take some liberties and elm (closely related to Zelkova) is a good candidate for broom style bonsai.