Trident maple at the 2013 Taikan-ten Exhibition which is happening right now (Nov 18-26). There’s a lot going on with the tree; three major trunks and a baby one sticking out the back, a large mounding nebari and a whole lot of movement. I particularly like the trunk on the right that emerges from the base of the nebari (the base of the base). I borrowed the photo from Bjorn Bjorholm (facebook of course).
I started this post thinking we’d show a few Taikan-ten Exhibition trees from the last few years. A sort of mini-history lesson. But that proved too ambitious for a Sunday morning, so I settled on three Taikan-ten trees with multiple trunks. Much easier and why not, they’re great trees and who doesn’t love good multi-trunk bonsai with their morning coffee?
I’m not sure what this is (Ezo spruce?) but I am sure that it’s a great tree. I wonder if Michael Hagedorn was inspired by this tree when he started working on his now famous Ezo spruce. The photo is from the 2011 Taikan-ten gallery at Empire Bonsai.
This is at least the second time we’ve shown this pine (looks like a Japanese white; Pinus parviflora). It’s from the 2011 Taikan-ten bonsai exhibition. The photo was also borrowed from Empire Bonsai. It’s hard to tell from this angle if all the trunks are sharing a single root-system. It could be a twin-trunk tree and a triple-trunk clump combined.