De Bonsai

What is a bonsai tree?

What is a Bonsai Tree? A bonsai tree is a living tree or shrub which has been grown in a way which gives the impression of being a full-sized, mature tree. An artistic representation of a full-sized tree in nature. Bonsai trees are generally grown in shallow ceramic pots. A bonsai is not a species of tree; in fact many species of tree can be turned into bonsai through various techniques.

A bonsai tree is a story

Now we’ve got some of images of trees in our minds. A bonsai tree takes some of these natural images and aims to create a representation of these images in miniature. In the wild, a tree looks the way that it does due to the location that it is growing in and due to what has happen to it over the course of its life. A small tree simply planted into a pot will not have any history behind it. It will not have a story.

Techniques

The practice of bonsai development incorporates a number of techniques either unique to bonsai or, if used in other forms of cultivation, applied in unusual ways that are particularly suitable to the bonsai domain. These techniques include:

• Leaf trimming, the selective removal of leaves (for most varieties of deciduous tree) or needles (for coniferous trees and some others) from a bonsai's trunk and branches.

• Pruning the trunk, branches, and roots of the candidate tree.

• Wiring branches and trunks allows the bonsai designer to create the desired general form and make detailed branch and leaf placements.

• Clamping using mechanical devices for shaping trunks and branches.

• Grafting new growing material (typically a bud, branch, or root) into a prepared area on the trunk or under the bark of the tree.

• Defoliation, which can provide short-term dwarfing of foliage for certain deciduous species.

• Deadwood bonsai techniques such as jin and shari simulate age and maturity in a bonsai.