I won't guess the species this time (crabapple?), I'm not good at it anyway. What I will guess is that these are fairly normal human fingers, which means this is a very small bonsai. This and two other photos in this post are from Eric Sin's facebook page.
Last two days of vacation. Rather than actually work at putting together a new post, we’ll dive back into our archives. This one appeared just over three years ago (Tiny Bonsai). We’ve done some essential editing, enlarged the photos and added one tree.
The biggest challenge with the smallest trees
Mini bonsai provide challenges that you don’t find with larger trees. It’s about showing something that’s compelling with a very limited number of branches to work with (you can almost always forget secondary, let alone tertiary branches). There are other challenges too, such as working in such a small format, and keeping something alive in such a small pot, but I think that such severely limited branching is the biggest challenge.
This is the one we added. It's one of my all time favorite mini bonsai (it's at least the third time we've shown it). You might recognize it as a Haruyosi bonsai. You might also figure out from the flower's blazing brilliance that it's a quince.
Almost grotesque, but pretty cool too. I don't dare guess, but if I did, I'd say it's a Winterberry (aka Japanese holly).
That's a pretty compelling trunk, taper and all. And talk about limited branching... Again, I won't guess that it's a crabapple.A couple quick words from our sponsor….
If you want to unlock the secrets of small trees, you might want to take a look at Morten Albek’s benchmark Shohin book.
Our Roshi bonsai tool sale & our Bonsai Aesthetics tool sale end tomorrow night. 25% off our already discounted price is a very good deal. Especially when you add in FREE Shipping for U.S. orders of 40.00 or more.