Wild & Wonderful Bonsai but No Rain in California 1/20/14

Wild! There’s so much going on with this delightfully crazy tree, that you could spend a long time looking at it and still see something new. It’s a Chinese juniper by Yang Hsui.

Yesterday I flew from snowy Boston to sunny San Francisco. I mention this because we flew over the Sierra Nevada, California’s magnificent mountain range, which, in the winter always appears as an endless chain of white from north to south, as far as the eye can see. Only this time no white. Just dark green, brown and other earth colors.

California and much of the west has been dry for three years now. The reserviors are near empty and San Francisco is a sunny 70, day in and day out. This is nice for someone who just escaped from another cold grey Vermont winter, but not good for California. If the drought persists, it can only go from not good, to worse.

Because I’m traveling once again, we’re back to our journey through our archives. And because our last post took us to Taiwan, we might as well stay there for now. The original appeared in April, 2011.

Taiwanese Bonsai
The three bonsai shown here are all from the 2008 Taiwan Bonsai Creators Exhibition booklet which appears on Bonsai Shari Si-Diao, Cheng, Cheng-Kung’s website. Cheng is one Taiwan’s most famous, and most innovative, bonsai artists and teachers.

This one is more wonderful than wild. But take a look at the size of the pot relative to the tree and particularly the trunk. Could the tree really stay in that pot? I suspect it’s it just for show and soon it will go back into a larger container. The texture of the trunk is interesting too. Looks kinda like termites got into in. It’s a Ficus microcarpa by Hsieh, Shun-Chin.

Wild and eccentric. I wonder if this tree was influenced by calligraphy? Certain Chinese bonsai styles use calligraphy as inspiration. Hibiscus tiliaceus by Chien, Yuen-Kui.