Tiny Trees

An Introduction To Bonsai

Tray Planting

Bonsai

The word literally means "tray planting", and is a Japanese term of art for horticultural techniques for producing small trees in containers that mimic the shape of full sized trees. Bonsai is a Japanese continuation of the Chinese art of penjing.

Brief History

Penjing date to the 2nd century BCE
The art arrived in Japan by 1195
Became a popular hobby by the 19th century
The Art of Bonsai was published in English in 1957
The first Western students study bonsai in japan in 1967

Cultivation and Care

Cultivation

Bonsai can come from propagation, nursery stock, or wild collection(yamadori) like the common elm in the photo.

Nursery stock and collected material are often heavily pruned and reshaped, as depicted.

Care

Trees planted in shallow trays require special care such as leaf trimming, pruning, repotting, root pruning, wiring, defoliation, and "dead wood" (jin).

Repotting shown in this album, allows roots to be trimmed, the tree to be repositioned, and allows future growth to be planned.