Bonsai Tree

                                                       

Bonsai is the ancient art of growing miniaturized trees in small containers.  A true bonsai is not a tree that naturally grows small, but a normal tree trained using a number of specialized tools and techniques by a bonsai master.  Just about any tree or shrub can be trained into a bonsai, but there are several species that are particularly well suited to the art.

The beginnings of bonsai occurred in China more than 1,000 years ago.  Trees were trained to look like their full grown counterparts and planted in trays or traditional pottery.  Bonsai, which is Japanese for “tray-planted,” refers to the art as we now know it, and was primarily developed by the Japanese. The Kasuga-gongen-genki, a picture scroll by Takashina Takakane (1309), is the first record of bonsai in Japan. In Japan, the art was developed to symbolize the ideas of mortality and the changing of the seasons.

Miniaturized trees do occur in nature, and provided the inspiration for the art itself. Trees that grow in high altitude mountainous regions or in low nutrient soil have a stunted growth pattern. The goal of a bonsai master is to replicate the traits shown by these naturally occurring trees.  Imagine the life of an ancient tree, alone on the face of a cliff, beaten down by an age of storms and high winds.  This is the inspiration for bonsai.

This aged appearance is prized by those drawn to bonsai.  There are a number of advanced techniques used to highlight these characteristics.  Bonsai trees can live to be more than a century old, and the oldest, part of the Tokyo imperial palace collection, has been trained for almost 400 years.