Bonsai Yesterday, Bonsai Today, Bonsai Tomorrow

BT100

Wallpaper. From the cover of Bonsai Today 100

For the first time in eons, we have a full complement of Bonsai Today issues. Every single one, from issue 1 through issue 108 is sitting in our warehouse waiting to fill out your collection.

Prices range from 6.00 dollar up to 80.00 (all are now on sale for an extra 25% off). The higher the price, the more scarce they are. Now to see how long they last.

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This California juniper was styled by Michael Hagedorn in issue 88 (a scarce one).
walterpineIf you've been around a while, you've no doubt seen this rather famous Scot's pine that belongs to Walter Pall. We've used it several times, including on the cover of the long scarce Bonsai Today issue 104.

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Another Immense Bonsai

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This photo of what can only be described as a massive Sabina juniper was taken at Bonsaisense in Mallorca Spain, after two days of skillful transformation by Bjorn Bjorholm (and algunos amigos).

Flashback. When I first glimpsed the tree above, I thought we were back at the Artisans Cup. I think this connection has a lot to do with this tree’s size and spread and just how many impressively large trees there were at the Cup.

In case you wondering, the size of a bonsai isn’t what makes it worthy or not worthy. Still, size does add dramatic effect. Especially up close and in person. Which is a way of saying, you’ll never get the full effect from a photo.

In fact, it’s not even close. You have to make the effort to get yourself to a bonsai show from time to time, or at least once in your lifetime (stay posted for an announcement on this year’s U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition).

The two Sabina images (above and below) are from Bjorn’s facebook feed.

HatanakaAfterReady-1This Prostrata juniper is different from the Sabina above in many respects, but still, when it comes to size, spread and dramatic effect, it's a not too distant cousin. Here's our caption from a post about this tree and the Artisans Cup: Michael Levin's 'Hatanaka' Prostrata juniper, 2014 June 2015. Even though the foliage hasn't filled out yet, this shot clearly shows the structure (the bones) of the tree and seems like a good place to start.

 

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When you realize that Rafael Torres is over seven feet tall (just kidding) you get a pretty good idea just how massive this tree is.

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Japanese White Pine Bonsai

wpineafter1This Japanese white pine shows a strong truck with good taper and nice balanced open branching. Most quality Japanese white pine bonsai have been grafted onto Black pine stock, but this one was grown from seed. When this photo was taken it had just been wired by Michael Hagedorn (Crataegus Bonsai.) It belongs to a client of Micheal's.

The Japanese white pine is one of the world’s emblematic bonsai. In Japan it is one of the two most famous classical bonsai species (the other is the Japanese black pine) and appreciation for its beauty and suitability for bonsai has spread throughout the world. So much so, that any serious bonsai display without at least one Japanese white pine might be said to be incomplete (climate permitting, of course).

Japanese white pine bonsai are usually grafted onto Japanese black pine  (Pinus thunbergii) stock, and though there might be people grafting them elsewhere, it seems that they all come from Japan. The reason for grafting is mostly because black pines are so much more vigorous than the more delicate and finicky Japanese whites. This is especially true of White pine cultivars, many of which simply won’t thrive on their own roots.

What’s in a name? The Latin name for Japanese white pine (aka Japanese five needle pine) is Pinus parviflora. The Japanese name is Goyo Matsu. Matsu is pine and Goyo means five-needle.

 

bonsaitonightRoot-on-rock Japanese white pines are not at all unusual. The more I look at this one, the more I am struck with just how balanced and tranquil it seems (taking nothing away from its rugged wild side). The photo was taken in Japan at the 2011 Sakufu-ten exhibition by Jonas Dupuich (Bonsai Tonight).

 

mariopine1Fluidity and muscle combined make for a very strong bonsai. To my eyes this is a near perfect informal upright Japanese white pine bonsai. It's from Mario Komsta's facebook photos. My guess is that it originated in Japan and that Mario has been growing it on and refining it. He calls it Goyo Kundo.

 

hiroI like the way this photo captures the lines and color in the bark of this famous tree. That's the upside. The downside is that there's no way to tell just how large and powerful this tree is (it's massive). In fact, it would be easy to think that it's not very big at all. It resides at the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. The photo is borrowed from Michael Bonsai.

 

10000001Million dollar bonsai. Here's a mind-bending Japanese white pine that we featured back in 2011 with this caption: This magnificent White pine was sold at the 11th Asia-Pacific Bonsai and Suiseki Convention & Exhibition in at Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan, earlier this month. As you can see, the asking price was 100,000,000 yen (that’s close to 1.3 million dollars). I don’t know what the actual sales price was. Photo borrowed from Bonsai Tonight. 

This flowing bunjin Japanese white pine provides a little contrast to the husky trees above. It's from our Masters' Series Pines: Growing and Styling Japanese Black and White Pines (just below).

All the photos and some of the text in this post originally appeared here on Bonsai Bark in January, 2013.

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B1PINE605-500x6473If you’d like to grow and style your own Japanese white pines, you’d do very well to consult with our famous pine book. Among other things, it contains some of the best how-to instruction anywhere. Great photos too.

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…or You Could Just Sit Back & Enjoy Some Beautiful Bonsai

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You don't often see bonsai photographed in front of luminous gold screens or other such strong backgrounds. In most cases a neutral background makes more sense; you want the tree to stand out from the background, not compete with it. But in this case, I think we're alright. The photo is from The Beauty of Bonsai.

Today’s post features photos from some of our excellent bonsai books. You could consider this post one big ad (today is the first day of New Bonsai Book Sale. 30% off our already discounted prices), or you could just sit back and enjoy some beautiful bonsai.

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One of a vast selection of outstanding photos from Fine Bonsai, perhaps the most astounding of all of our books.

 

B1MOTpemp1How did Robert Steven arrive at this level of artistry and how can you get there too? Robert’s goal with Mission of Transformation is to answer these questions. The tree is a Pemphis acidula

 

lit11This unique twin trunk literati pine is one of 340 exceptional photos in Zhao Qingquan's Literati Style Penjing, Chinese Bonsai Masterworks. A highly practical how-to bonsai book and a pictorial exploration of its history, aesthetic, styles and preservation of the art of Literati bonsai.
B1CRESPIbackEnglish hawthorn in full color. What might be considered serious design flaws in other bonsai are overlooked with flowering trees in bloom. Photo is from Crespi - Crespi Bonsai Museum.

 

B1JUNBoonSierra1This Sierra juniper by Boon Manakitivipart is one of three trees by Boon that appears in the gallery section of our  Masters' Series Juniper book.

 

 pinecascadeThis famous cascading Japanese black pine is from the gallery section in our Masters Series Pine book.
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Powerful Pine Bonsai, Books & Wire

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This has to be one of the most impressive bonsai pine forests anywhere. Actually, you can scratch the pine part and we'll just leave it at one of the most impressive forests, period. Most of us would be more than delighted to have any one of these trees in our backyard, let alone the whole planting. Nice pot too. Looks a bit like an escarpment in the Rockies. This and the other photos in this post are courtesy of Robert Steven.

We’ve shown all the photos featured here before, but they are so exceptional that there’s no harm in showing them at least once a year.  Robert Steven (you might know him from his excellent critiques and because he’s a famous bonsai artist, teacher, impresario and author) sent us a whole host of great photos from the 2012 BCI convention in China. Including the powerful pines shown here.

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This powerful pine with its aged, heavily plated bark (reminiscent of our North American Ponderosa pines, especially the reddish section at the base of the trunk) is one of many spectacular trees displayed at the 2012 BCI convention in China.
BCI21Another powerful trunk. This one is accented by two whirling circles.

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Our Masters Series Pine Book
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BC14Looking up at this angle it's easy to imagine you're looking at some massive old-growth Ponderosa pines in the Rocky or Sierra mountains. This effect is heightened by the heavy reddish-orange bark; a striking feature of Ponderosa.

 

BCI3I like the way this one doubles back on itself as though it has spent countless winters under a heavy snow load. Great taper on another powerful trunk too.

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A Scent of Spring

B1NAT2azalea

I like it when azaleas show some leaves when they bloom. Sometimes you see them completely covered with flowers, which can seem a little unnatural. This magnificent Nyohozan Satsuki Azalea belongs to Melvyn Goldstein. Its height is only 10 inches (25cm). It, along with nearly two hundred of North America's other greatest bonsai, can be found in the 2nd U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition Album (out of print - Albums 3 & 4 are still available).

We’re not out of the winter woods yet here in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, but there is a slight scent of spring in the breeze. Still, digging season is six or seven weeks away, so for now we’ll content ourselves with dreaming of the day and enjoying a few flowering photos.

 

wisteria

I just discovered this Wisteria bonsai on Etsy. I don't know who styled or owns it. The other two photos in this post originally appeared here on Bark way back in January, 2011.

 

ume

This somewhat out-of-focus tree is from Bonsai Guest House Osaka (facebook). Here's their website. It looks a lot like a Flowering apricot, one of the few deciduous trees that holds deadwood for a long time without rot setting in (especially if you treat it with lime sulfur).
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These well worn Okatsune bypass shears belong to Greg McNally and Jill Faulkner of Fall Brook Tree Farm in Wheelock Vermont. Jill uses hers all year, but most intensively before the holidays when she makes wreaths. She makes thousands of cuts a day when she’s going strong and has been using the same shears for years. Our calculations came up with 500,000 cuts, but suspect it could easily be twice that.

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Freedom, Artistry & Boundless Enthusiasm

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Sometimes the toughest choice I make all day is deciding which tree to show first. All seven bonsai shown here exhibit the sense of freedom and artistry that caught my attention and helped make that other tough decision; what or who to blog about. Finally, this wildly uninhibited juniper (the one I saw first) won out. It and the rest of the trees shown here belong to Isao Omachi.

Whether you like Isao Omachi’s bonsai or not (though it’s hard for me to understand why anyone wouldn’t), you have to admire his boundless enthusiasm and playfulness, which even if you don’t know anything about him as a person, shines through in his trees.

All the trees shown here are from Isao’s facebook photos.

omachi

This Juniper is just a little tamer. A perfect marriage of traditional (the crown and overall shape) and abstract (the crazy dance of the deadwood and living vein - a reoccurring theme in Isao's bonsai).

 

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This one is a little heavier and more static. But still that touch of wildness. Looks like a Yew.

 

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Walking way over on the wild side.

 

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Here's another one the combines a traditional overall look with a dynamic play of deadwood and living veins. All the way out to the tips of some of the branches.

 

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Dancer

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Parallel trunks. Looks like another Yew.

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Old Bonsai & Ancient Trees

800-year-old-bonsai-tree

This magnificent Juniper bonsai is said to be 800 years old, which makes it a very old bonsai. But not the oldest bonsai we know of and nowhere near the oldest living tree in the world. It resides at Kunio Kobayashi's Shunka-en Bonsai Museum in Tokyo. I borrowed the photo from Bonsai Empire.


oldest-tree-old-tjikko-sweden-18Old Tjikko. This lonely Norway spruce (Picea abies) is said to be 9,500 years old. But the trunk you see in this photo is only a few hundred years old.

The tree above is called Old Tjikko. It originally gained fame as the world’s oldest tree, but that seems a bit of a stretch. Though its DNA may be over 9,500 years old, I wouldn’t say that it’s the oldest tree in the world. Instead, it’s the oldest known living clonal Norway Spruce.

The following quote is from Wikipedia. “The age of the tree was determined by carbon dating of genetically matched plant material collected from under the tree, as dendrochronology would cause damage. The trunk itself is estimated to be only a few hundred years old, but the plant has survived for much longer due to a process known as layering (when a branch comes in contact with the ground, it sprouts a new root), or vegetative cloning (when the trunk dies but the root system is still alive, it may sprout a new trunk).” Wikipedia has a lot more to say and if you’re like me, you’ll find the whole story fascinating.

 

bristlecone

This rugged little Bristlecone pine was posted on facebook by Jean-Paul Polmans. Bristlecones are considered by many to be the oldest living trees in the world. According to Wikipedia, the oldest Pinus longaeva is more than 5,000 years old (Pinus longaeva is one of the three Bristlecone species). Bristlecones live their long lives in the remote, high altitude, semi-arid mountains of the western U.S.

crespi@wbff-1

Oldest living bonsai? Here's a quote from Bonsai Empire "This Ficus Bonsai is reported to be over a thousand years old; the oldest Bonsai tree in the world. It is the main tree on display, at the Crespi Italian Bonsai museum." I'm not sure about the oldest bonsai in the world part, but it's no doubt very old and very impressive. If the photo looks familiar, it might be because we've shown it before (or because it's a rather famous tree).

 

Manseien-bonsai-1000years-old

“This juniper is tested to be more than 1000 years old, collected in the wild in Japan. It is still a rough material, as it is in training. It is at the Mansei-en bonsai nursery of the Kato family in Omiya, Japan. Photo by Morten Albek.” I borrowed the photo and the quote from Bonsai Empire.

 

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Let’s Twist

kimura71This little Shimpaku juniper was grown in Japan and shaped by human hands. Though it’s almost impossible to mimic the raw and rugged look that nature sometimes comes up with, this one isn't half bad. The final styling was done by Masahiko Kimura. You can find this photo in The Magician, the Bonsai Art of Kimura 2.

Is it possible to grow bonsai that have the coveted natural look you find with collected (yamadori) trees? Judging from the photo above, you can at least come close.

We don’t do a lot of how-to articles, but now and then we find something we just can’t overlook. In this case it’s personal; I’m field growing some small Shimpaku junipers and am interested in doing what I can to create that twisted-and-otherwise-abused-by-nature look.

The photo above is from our The Magician, the Bonsai Art of Kimura 2. The rest of the photos shown here are from a post titled Creating Twisted Juniper on a blog called Tiny Trident Bonsai. I selected a few of the post’s many step-by-step photos. You can visit Tiny Trident for the whole article.

 

T2A young Shimpaku juniper just out of a 1 gallon nursery container. This photo and the following photos are from Tiny Trident Bonsai.

 

T4The lower growth has been removed and three strands of wire have been applied. Now it's time to do some bending. BTW: the wire looks a lot like our Bonsai Aesthetics wire (all of our wire is now 25% off at Stone Lantern).

 

T5The first bend is on the lower trunk.

 

T7A second and third bend have been created on the trunk and the final (for now) bend is on the first branch.

 

T9Done for now. Here's Tiny Trident's caption: "This tree will be left to grow in this state until the wire starts to significantly cut in. As this happens I will take the wire off and carve a twisted shari up the trunk. This should hopefully create a short tree with lots of interest in the trunk."

This post is a rerun (with some minor changes). It originally appear June 2014.

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