Flowers, a Tiny Lizard & Other Bonsai Wonders

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It's almost that time of year. Here's David Benavente's caption... Rhododendron indicum “Shin Nikko” hoy, en plena floración (today in full bloom). 45x55cm (18" x 21.5")

We’re still working on finishing touches for our soon-to-be launched new website. Stay posted, I think you’re going to like it. Meanwhile time is of essence so we’ll take our trusty old shortcut. This one is from May of last year.

It’s been a while since we’ve featured David Benavente and his Estudio de Bonsái. It’s in Galapagar, Spain. Just outside of Madrid. The photos are from David’s timeline

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It's not only about the flowers. Close up of the lower trunk and nebari

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European olive (Olea europaea).  No caption with this one, but it speaks for itself

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Closeup

 

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Lizard on a European olive. Is this the same tree?

 

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Japanese maple leaves

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When Can You Call It Bunjin?

Bunjin (aka Literati), a style you don't see too much in the West. I think it's difficult to do bunjin properly. It defies our tendency to fill up space. Adding rather than subtracting, where subtracting all the way down to bare bones seems to be one of the keys. There's much more, but I'm not that versed in the topic, so we'll leave it at that

This is the third consecutive day of our virtual visit to Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai. Today it’s some pines in Michael’s portfolio that caught my eye.

Though it started unintentionally, there’s a progression based on bunjin that evolved while this post was taking shape. Or more accurately, a progression on what I take to be bunjin, which is an open question.

 

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You might call this one bunjin. It has that certain spare elegance

 

I don't think I'd call this bunjin, but it does share some qualities

 

Ditto

 

Definitely not Bunjin. Too short and stout, but there's still some of the bunjin-like naturalness that might defy ordinary bonsai convention

 

I don't know what you'd call this one. Maybe unusual will have to do.

 

"Oh what tangled webs we weave."

 

Speaking of Literati (another word for bunjin)…

…this book has it! 

 

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Be Smart – Don’t Water Your Bonsai by Schedule!

This illustration by Kyosuke Gun is from our Masters' Series Juniper book (due back in print in 3 or 4 weeks). It is a perfect fit for this post that is borrowed from Michael Hagedorn's  Crataegus Bonsai

Continuing with Michael Hagedorn from yesterday, we’ll stick with watering tips. This one originally appeared here in June, 2009

Before the real summer heat hits, consider how you are watering your trees.

Have you ever seen your trees grow through spring just fine, only to get fried leaves at the first onset of early summer? Ever wonder why that happens?

Those trees just don’t have enough roots. Those are the trees that got overwatered, or simply never dried out, in the cool spring months. Their roots were never encouraged to hunt out water, so these trees could survive in the moist cool weather on about three roots. First hot day: bam, they get hit hard as they have a spindly root system, not enough to support their overlarge, over long leaves and shoots on dry hot days. (A bonsai version of a company that has overspent just before a recession…)

Especially on cool overcast days, if you can monitor them, water each tree only when it is really drying out and not by rote. Watering by a schedule is the surest way to have some really weak trees that show themselves in the hot summer!

Did you think we'd do a whole post without showing at least one bonsai? This Rock mountain juniper is from Michael's Crataegus Portfolio.

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One of the Best Pieces of Bonsai Advice…

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This old collected Rocky Mountain juniper is from Michael Hagedorn's Crataegus Bonsai portfolio.

Spent long days all weekend rewriting my old copy for all 700 or so of our products for our new, soon to be live website. It’s a big job, but essential. If you don’t believe me, read some of our current, soon to be replaced thirteen year old website and you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, I’m not finished yet and time is still compressed, so it’s back to our archives. This one originally appeared here in April, 2015. It’s one of the best pieces of bonsai advice I’ve ever read, and should be posted at least once a year 

What follows has been lifted word for word, photo for photo from Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai. There’s much more where this came from and I encourage you to visit Michael’s Crataegus Blog. His depth and breath of bonsai wisdom will always make it worth your time
Now a quick word from our sponsor…

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Michael’s Spring Watering Tips

April 17, 2015 by Michael Hagedorn, Crataegus Bonsai (Michael’s text and captions are in italics).

“There are a lot of things we might say about watering bonsai. I’ve tried a few times on this blog to mention some of them. Some are hard to make sense of in words, but as ever I’m willing to try. This one is about watering recently repotted trees.

“At post-repotting time we need to be awake to one change-up, and that is that the interior soil mass (the part that was returned to the pot) may dry out much faster than you’d think.”

"If that interior area is full of fine roots, it will dry out fast after repotting."
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"This pine is beginning to develop a solid mass of soil and roots, and this is the area that we’ll take our moisture ‘read’ from when deciding when to water. When dry, it will look very light colored compared to the surrounding new soil."

“If you cut all the fine roots off in repotting your tree, shame on you, but that’s a different issue. For the sake of this example, we’ll assume you have fine roots, and that we’re talking only about established trees with a solid mass of roots and soil. There are myriad other situations, such as proto-root balls with stringy roots that don’t yet hold soil together, but these photos show what we’re hoping for and working towards.”

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"A deciduous tree with a very mature ‘loaf’ of roots and soil that is returned to the pot, to be surrounded with new soil."

“Especially with conifers, we usually don’t prune any branches at the same time as repotting. And so…

"In repotting refined bonsai, we’ve created a situation where fewer roots are going to be supplying the same upper water need."

“This interior mass we’re talking about, this is the area you should watch to determine when to water. Ignore, for a few weeks at least, taking your moisture reading from the new soil you’ve settled in around the original mass. There’s no active roots in the new soil yet and it won’t be drying out fast.”

"Another thing to keep in mind when repotting is to keep a portion of this old soil mass exposed, not covered with new soil, so that you can see when it’s drying out."
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"Freshly repotted beech, showing the two zones of soil—the older soil that is a bit green and mossy near the roots, and the newer soil that is gray (sphagnum moss covering new soil, actually). The older soil will be our indicator when to water, and is not covered with new soil on top but is exposed."

“In many cases you’ll be watering when the new soil is still moist. So we ignore that area. Again, I’m only commenting on watering repotting bonsai with more mature root structures.

“To sum up, only read the moisture level where there are roots to determine when to water.
Wordy post. Hope some of that made sense!

“Here’s a previous post about watering that might spread a broader net around the issue of watering.”

All the above photos above and all the text in quotes are from Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai.

 

B1POST for web

I’ve said it before… Still the best bonsai read in the English language

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A Dramatic Juniper with a Slight List to the Left

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This dramatic Juniper may be leaning just a tad too far to the left (or is it just me?) Either way, too far left or just right, to my eyes its almost unbalanced feel creates just enough tension to add interest

Continuing with Luis Vallejo’s bonsai, here’s one from our archives (Novemeber, 2012). 

All the photos shown here are from Luis Vallejo’s Museo Bonsai de Alconbendas.  I borrowed them  from the Bonsai Center Sopelana in Spain’s Basque Country
Continued below…

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Good nebari, good trunk, good branching and brilliant color. It's a Japanese maple. I won't bother to guess the variety

 

Unfortunately you can't see the trunks and much of the rock in this photo, but you can see the lush Hinoki foliage and the tree's balanced, dynamic flow

 

This one's a beech. You might notice how small the leaves are. It must have been defoliated

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Bonsai Tie Pots – NEW Deeper Discounts!

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We just started offering our remarkable New Tie Pots last September and already we’re closing in on 1,000 sold (during the off season, no less!).
Now we’ve sharpened our pencil to make them available to more people. I think you’ll be happy with the results.

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Tie Pots have the potential to revolutionize bonsai growing

 

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Blue Skies & Beautiful Bonsai

There's a lot to like about a good Stewartia like this, including the fine ramafication (branching). Only years of careful trimming can accomplish this. There's also the strong nebari that offers a sense of stability and a sign of age on any good Stewartia. And then there's the beauty of the exfoliating bark with its soft reddish shades. All this makes for a masterpiece bonsai. I cropped the original photo for a closer look (it's below with the original caption)

We can’t stay away from Luis Vallejo’s Bonsai Museum for very long. Though I don’t have time to count, I’d guess we’ve featured Luis and his bonsai maybe forty or fifty times over the ten years we’ve been doing this. This time our theme is three extraordinary deciduous trees with the bare limbs of winter

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Twin trunk Field elm (Ulmus minor). The original caption is below with the uncropped original photo

 

Chinese hackberry (Celtis sinensis). The uncropped original and caption are below

 

Blue skies and bonsai at Luis Vallejo's Museo de Bonsai in Madrid

 

Here's the original caption for this Stewartia.... Stewartia monadelpha  Himeshara. Estevartia  Jardin de Bonsai Luis Vallejo" And here's what it all means... Stewartia monadelpha is the tree's botanical name. Himeshara is the Japanese name for Stewartia and Estevartia is Spanish for Stewartia. Foto is of course, photo

 

Here’s the original caption for this one… Ulmus minor. Olmo negrillo. By Luis Vallejo. Foto Miguel Krause. Luis Vallejo Bonsai Garden

 

The original caption... "Celtis sinensis. Almez oriental by Luis Vallejo/LVEB. Luis Vallejo Bonsai Garden"

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That Rugged Yamadori Look in a Tropical Bonsai World

An an ancient sinuous root stand in Robert Steven's tropical bonsai world

Continuing with Robert Steven (see day before yesterday) with some of my favorites he has posted over the years. There are many more to be sure, but these provide some powerful glimpses. They are all from his fb timeline 

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This and the other trees shown here all have that rugged collected-from-the-wild (yamadori) look

 

A simple tree with its gnarled time-twisted trunk, leans into the darkness

 

robert680This is the one Ric (our warehouse manager and resident artist) used for his drawing on our company T-shirt

 

Ric asked his neighbor to model our T-shirt

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Bonsai Deadwood, Too Much or Just Right?

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This unusual full cascade Juniper will no doubt put off some of our anti-deadwood folks, but to my eyes, it's an expressive and dynamic tree. Cascade shots are normally taken from a point that shows the tree cascading down one side of the pot, but in this case the pot is hidden by the tree, which creates a whole different effect.

Still busy putting finishing touches on our soon to be  New Website, so we’ll take a short cut and dip back into our archives…
All the photos shown here were taken by Andres Bicocca at the 2017 European Bonsai San Show in Saulieu France. Andres’ only text with the photos reads… Viaje a Francia “Saulieu 2017.”  Non of the trees or artists are identified (no blame, they were no doubt taken on the fly and I’m just happy to have them). I took the liberty of cropping all the photos and brightening some that were on the dark side.

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I originally thought this might be a European beech, but then I decided to forgo guessing for the moment

 

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I wanted to say Hinoki cypress, but again no guessing for now

 

shimab

This one looks like a close cousin to our lead tree

 

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Root-over-rock Trident maple. You can tell by the leaves and so many root-over rock bonsai are Tridents anyway

 

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This is not a guess, but just an observation that this one looks a lot like a Japanese beech.

 

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Here's the tree from the top of the post. This time with the whole display

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Warming Up for the 2020 International Bonsai ArtFest

This elegant composition is a small piece of a mixed media show that Robert Steven put together (with a little help from his friends) at the Pasar Seni Art Center in Jakarta, Indonesia. If you are near Jakarta, there's still time to catch it before it closes (March 7th is the last day)

I originally found this mixed media bonsai event on Robert Steven’s fb timeline. Most of the text is in Malay and rather than rely on machine translation, I ask Robert if he could write something for this post. Here it is, in his own words…

“This was just a warming up show between Indonesia Bonsai Artists Community with the artists community of Pasar Seni Art Center in Jakarta for preparing the colossal multimedia collaboration in September 2020 for our International Bonsai ArtFest “Mission & Legends – Path to Beyond”
Continued below…

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Robert Steven continued from above…
“Taking the opportunity of the Chinese New Year and the 44th. Anniversary of Pasar Seni Art Center, we conducted this small scale event to build an initial connection between the artists of different art forms, so we can expect creative ideas will be presented next year as another ground breaking event after the great success of our International Bonsai Art & Culture Biennale (IBA&CB) in 2014.

“As I promised, I would never done any bonsai event if I could not do something better then IBA&CB 2014, and now I am ready to rock the bonsai world again with something unique, different, colossal and lots of fun in a wonderful venue ! So it is not a bonsai exhibition nor convention, but a Bonsai ArtFest”

 

 

 

 

 

The crew. That's Robert is in the center with his wrists resting on his knees

 

The venue

 

Visitors at the event

 

More visitors. Everyone seems to be gazing at the same bonsai

 

A closer look at a piece of the photo from the top of the post

 

Robert flashing his Black Scissors mudra

 

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