Читать книгу Bountiful Bonsai - Richard W. Bender - Страница 6

CHAPTER 1

Bonsai: An

Overview

While the history of bonsai goes back several hundred years in its modern form as developed by the Japanese, there is no doubt that mankind has shaped plants for as long as humans have grown and tended them. The first plants grown in containers were most likely valuable herbs or food plants that the growers wanted to transport or protect from harm. The oldest images of potted plants come from Egyptian paintings; Hindu doctors were known to keep medicinal plants in pots for easy cultivation and transportation around 1000 BCE.

Bonsai became a well-developed art in China during the first millennium CE, as evidenced by the first writings and paintings about bonsai as an art form. By the time of the Sung dynasty, around 1000 CE, bonsai as an art form was spreading throughout Chinese culture with paintings, poetry, and technical instructions in the literature of the time. It was probably around this time that bonsai was introduced into Japan, most likely by Buddhist monks; the first written records of bonsai appeared there around 1300 CE.

Bonsai developed into its modern form in Japan with very strict styles and conventions that mirrored the structured society in which it developed. Specimens were mostly grown outdoors, and were often tended for generations, passing from father to son, using native plant varieties that were suited to the local climatic conditions. Western society was exposed to the art of bonsai during the twentieth century, particularly during the aftermath of World War II. Many American GIs who spent time in Japan after the war became fascinated by aspects of Japanese culture, and bonsai was an interest that some of them brought home. The Karate Kid movies, the first of which came out in 1984, introduced bonsai to a new generation of children in the US. In fact, 1989’s Karate Kid, Part III opened with the karate master Mr. Miyagi fulfilling his lifelong dream of opening a bonsai shop. A bonsai theme was prominent in that movie, including recapturing a “repatriated” bonsai tree that Mr. Miyagi had planted back in the wild after bringing it to America from Okinawa. Throughout the 1980s, as a bonsai artist managing several garden centers I witnessed an amazing number of children, primarily boys, who were looking for bonsai “like Mr. Miyagi’s trees.” Millions of children were exposed to and fascinated by bonsai as a result of this type of mass-media attention. Traditional Japanese bonsai had captured the imagination of the West.

Unfortunately, many of the resulting attempts at cultivation were unsuccessful. Millions of juniper bonsai died in people’s homes as buyers reached out to embrace a fad without understanding the conditions required to keep these trees alive. Traditional Japanese-style bonsai primarily uses outdoor trees that require a cold dormant period to thrive—junipers, pines, and maples. These outdoor varieties are not suitable for use as houseplants, and seldom last long indoors. As the art of bonsai gained a foothold in the West, however, more indoor varieties were used, because people wanted bonsai that could be put in the house and treated like houseplants.

The art of bonsai has developed with several different philosophies or schools of thought beyond the traditional Japanese style. The use of strictly indoor varieties has become most prominent of these, embracing many new varieties beyond the usual ficus and serissa that were among the few tropical varieties used by traditional Chinese and Japanese bonsai artists. A sideline to this is the specialization in flowering varieties. Another philosophy, similar to traditional Japanese-style bonsai, strives to use only local varieties native to the region and grow them outdoors.

An older style that seems to be losing favor is the collection of wild, natural bonsai. This is understandable, as the field trips to wild areas to collect “natural” bonsai that this tradition involved resulted in the defacement of natural areas and losses from digging up trees in the wild. Modern environmental ethics preclude digging wild bonsai from our dwindling natural areas.

There is still a place, however, for collecting “wild” natural bonsai when cleaning brush from cultivated fields, lawns, or vacant lots. Some amazing bonsai can be collected when cleaning out old yards and fields, without damaging our natural areas. A friend clearing brush from a lot collected one of the most unique bonsai I’ve ever seen, a wild elm with a two-inch diameter trunk that was cut off twelve inches above the ground and potted into a six-inch plastic pot. A year later, this stump had developed a fine, strong set of roots and a fringe of branches growing around the rim of the stump. My friend had always wanted a hollow-trunked bonsai, so as a demonstration at a bonsai show, he used a one-inch bit and a hand drill to hollow the trunk straight down from the top to an inch above the ground and in from the side to meet the bottom of that hole. He then took a two-handed electric router and carved a jagged ”lightning strike” down several inches from one side of the top and shaped the hole from the side. As wood chips were hitting the roof of the greenhouse, the traditional bonsai artists in attendance gaped in amazement at the scene unfolding in front of them. I saw that tree again a year later, and it had survived the harsh treatment.

Using herbs as subjects for bonsai was only mentioned a handful of times in the previous history of bonsai writing before the publication of my article “Herbs as Bonsai” in the November 1987 edition of Horticulture magazine, which was followed by my book Herbal Bonsai in 1996. Herbal bonsai changes the whole timescale of bonsai development because of its comparatively fast growth. Impressive specimens can be created in as little as one growing season with a plant such as rosemary, yet these plants can be kept alive in pots for fifty years or more. A moderately large herbal bonsai can provide homegrown fresh herbs in sufficient quantity to supply a household. Growing herbs indoors can be a little trickier than cultivating tropical plant varieties, but the idea of consuming your bonsai trimmings leads naturally to considering a fruiting bonsai that provides a usable harvest.

It seems a little incongruous to think of a bonsai tree providing enough harvest to amount to much, but bonsai don’t have to be miniature. Even traditional Japanese classifications include bonsai up to six feet tall. An edible fig or a citrus tree of that size can provide an amazing amount of fruit. I have harvested enough of these fruits to make jam and to ferment into wine (although I will admit to freezing an entire crop and using a couple of crops to make two cases of wine). A friend asked whether I pour tiny glasses of bonsai wine. I replied, “Of course, we use sake cups to help provide the proper ceremonial courtesy when sharing such a rare vintage.”

Limequat Mariachi wine.

Citrus trees have an added advantage in that most citrus fruits can sit on a tree for several months after becoming ripe without going bad, and can be picked fresh when ready to use. With a small collection of several varieties of citrus, it is possible to have fresh citrus to pick nearly 365 days a year, even in places like my home in the Colorado mountains. You may not be able to pick one every single day of the year, but it is quite reasonable to expect to pick a couple of fruits a week for cooking purposes. Varieties with smaller fruits have more appeal strictly as bonsai specimens, and also provide a bigger crop than large-fruited varieties. These small varieties include calamondin orange, kumquat, Key lime, and the harder-to-find limequat (a lime-kumquat cross). The limequat is the heaviest bearer of fruit in my experience, and my calamondins here in Colorado usually produce two crops a year.

Limequats, a lime-kumquat cross, are a little smaller than an egg and turn yellow when ripe. Though sour, they have great flavor, and can be used peel and all in many kinds of cooking.

Though many people grow ornamental ficus trees in their homes, they seldom grow the species that produce edible figs. There are many cultivated varieties, of which Ficus carica is the most prevalent. Th e “standard” ficus, which resembles a lollipop stuck in a five-gallon nursery pot, is one of the most common houseplants sold in the plant industry, and is widely used in interior landscaping. An edible fig variety of the same size can produce several dozen fresh figs every summer. There are some differences in care and appearance between ornamental and edible figs that might seem daunting, but the benefit of obtaining fresh fruit from houseplants outweighs many other considerations.

This bowl of limequats made seven half-pints of limequat marmalade; the rest was fermented into three cases of wine.

Many dedicated coffee and tea drinkers don’t realize that these plants are rather easy to grow as houseplants. The camellia, a popular flowering tree that blooms in mid-winter, is often grown as a houseplant in northern climates. Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, has smaller, less spectacular flowers than ornamental camellia varieties, but the white flowers are numerous and the blooming season lasts longer. Green tea plants and seeds can be found and purchased online. A regular tea drinker may not be able to grow their entire supply, but any amount of homegrown tea is a worthy addition to a collection of teas.

Coffee trees can be easy to find. Large trees produce many beans; some of the large foliage growers in Florida will throw a handful of coffee beans into four-inch pots and include the seedlings in their shipments of mixed-foliage plants. I’ve found these pots of coffee trees mixed into inexpensive foliage collections at garden centers all over the country. Coffee trees take some time to begin producing beans, but I have not only produced beans in Colorado from plants that started as six-inch seedlings, but have seen a six-foot coffee tree in Montana so loaded with beans there was fear the branches would break. Again, houseplants cannot be expected to offer a full supply of coffee, but the ability to offer coffee harvested from the beautiful tree in your living room on special occasions is priceless.

This thirty-inch dwarf pomegranate, cultivated from a five-gallon nursery stock plant, has been in training for seven months.

These fruits are considered ornamental. While their quality doesn’t compare to that of full-sized commercial pomegranates, they are beautiful and technically edible.

A few edible species are becoming more common in indoor tropical bonsai collections, particularly Australian cherry (Eugenia paniculata), dwarf pomegranate (Punica granatum var. nana), Barbados cherry (Malpighia emarginata), and Natal plum (Carissa macrocarpa). All of these are easy to find and have several varieties available, some of which are known to produce more fruit than others. Natal plums are used extensively in landscaping in the desert Southwest and should be easy to find at nurseries in that area. Dwarf pomegranates, which can flower and fruit heavily, are becoming very popular as bonsai specimens. Large fruiting pomegranate varieties have larger leaves that may go deciduous for a period; they aren’t as attractive as the dwarf variety, but they do bear much larger fruit. The heavier flowering and fruiting varieties of Australian cherry are widely sold at local nurseries as large topiary specimens, but the miniature varieties that make the most spectacular bonsai only flower sporadically, and in twenty years of growing them, I have never seen them bear fruit.

Miniature Australian cherries seldom flower. This specimen is sixteen inches tall.

Several species of guava, including the strawberry guava (Psidium cattleanum), lemon guava (Psidium littorale) and pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana), produce delightful fruit and can be grown indoors. Papayas can be grown from seed out of fruit from the market; I have grown them from seed to fruiting in Colorado. Avocados, easily sprouted from their large pits, can be shaped into interesting bonsai, although they are unlikely to fruit in the home. Many people grow jasmine and hibiscus as flowering plants without realizing that these flowers are quite useful in herbal teas; I have also made wine from the flowers of my bonsai jasmine and hibiscus specimens. While not technically edible, aromatic tropical trees like camphor, New Zealand tea tree, and eucalyptus can be grown as bonsai and provide a useful harvest. Furthermore, many unusual tropical fruits that are little known outside of their native areas could be experimented with as edible bonsai. I recommend experimenting with what you find locally, or seeking out any variety that captures your imagination. With the vastness of the Internet to search for unique varieties, the possibilities are endless.

Bonsai plants have a reputation for being very easy to kill and hard to grow, and for requiring a lot of time-consuming, detailed work. People are afraid to prune the tops of their plants, much less trim the roots of their valuable aged specimen. People who are afraid to prune their houseplants end up with long, spindly stems reaching for the ceiling with a little tuft of foliage on top. Pruning such a plant in order to produce a pleasing shape is easy, and creates a stronger, more stable plant. This is not much different from shaping a plant as a bonsai. When a plant is intended to produce a crop, some considerations may be different from traditional bonsai practice, outweighing ideals like always maintaining a perfect shape. Larger, fuller crowns are needed for a good-sized crop, making the sparser, heavily pruned style of bonsai unsuitable if production is important. Some desirable fruiting specimens, including the large-fruited citrus varieties like full-sized lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruit, have leaves that are larger than would be desired in a more traditional bonsai style.

This seventy-inch-tall lemon tree bends under the weight of its twenty-seven lemons.

In traditional bonsai, the ideal specimen has a pot that is no deeper than the diameter of the bonsai’s trunk. Striving toward this “perfection” leads to most bonsai being sold in very shallow trays that are difficult to keep watered in homes with heaters and dehumidifiers—a problem that is compounded in dry climates. Especially when growing a large indoor bonsai specimen that might reach several feet in height, a larger, deeper pot than is traditional must be used to keep the plant healthy and productive. Root pruning—a requirement for training a tree that might grow over fifty feet tall in its natural environment to be an eighteen-inch specimen when it is 250 years old—also seems to be a sticking point for many potential bonsai enthusiasts. Pruning for this type of bonsai, as described in much bonsai literature, may involve washing all the dirt from the roots just before the tree breaks its dormancy in the spring and pruning a third of them before returning it to the same pot with fresh soil. This is very intimidating to the novice.

Small roots were pruned in the process of exposing the base of the trunk and shaping the root ball of this strawberry tree.

The original soil level can still be seen on the trunk of this strawberry tree.

Most of the varieties discussed in this book are shrubs and small trees that are easy to keep in shape just by pruning the tops, although you sometimes have to let the tops get a little wild and wooly in flowering and fruiting season. Most of these tropical plants do not go dormant (edible figs are an exception) and cannot survive such harsh treatment as washing all the dirt from the roots. Like most typical houseplants, repotting involves gently disturbing the roots to stimulate growth into the new soil in a slightly larger pot. Sometimes roots at the base of the trunk are pruned and exposed to simulate aging and give the bonsai character. Because larger and deeper pots are used than with traditional bonsai, harsh root pruning is seldom required. Lightly pruning the foliage at the same time as repotting allows the plant to stay in balance with the disturbed roots, preventing it from going into shock before the new hair roots begin to grow and nourish your bonsai specimen.

Light requirements are another consideration in some situations. Most flowering and fruiting tropical varieties in this book require bright light to do their best; they may not produce if they don’t receive enough light. Edible figs actually do much better outside during the summer. When they go dormant and lose all their leaves for a couple months in the winter, figs do just fine in a lower-light situation, or even a basement or garage kept above freezing, until they start to sprout new leaves again in the spring and once again need brighter light. Citrus plants are also happier outside in the summer, but in climates with cloudy and colder winter conditions, these light-loving bonsai specimens may need supplemental lighting. Inexpensive full-spectrum plant light bulbs that screw into normal sockets or even track lighting can be found in any large hardware or lighting store. Even a single 150-watt bulb can make a huge difference when providing supplemental light for a large specimen during low-light seasons.

Most people believe bonsai need constant daily misting in addition to other the time-consuming work required to keep bonsai. This myth was spread by workers at garden centers, who hoped that constant misting would keep little juniper bonsai alive longer indoors, or at least keep foliage soft enough that it would take a while for the bonsai enthusiast to realize the tree was really quite dead. I observed this behavior during thirty-five years of plant industry work while managing four large garden centers and operating my own wholesale bonsai business for twenty years. In fact, daily misting will benefit a bonsai for a week or so after repotting, since the disturbance to the roots hampers the plant’s ability to draw water from the soil. This is especially true in dry climates and when repotting is done during warm weather. Outside this period, however, the varieties described in this book have no need for daily or even regular misting (although any specimen that will live for years will benefit and look better after being rinsed in the shower or outside with a hose a couple of times a year).

Another myth about bonsai is the belief that maintaining a bonsai specimen requires hours of detailed work and pruning on a regular basis. This is a complete misconception. Traditional outdoor bonsai grow so slowly that some varieties are only pruned once a year, and in cold climates are put into cold storage with minimal care for the entire winter. Fast-growing tropical bonsai need to be pruned several times a year; this can be seasonal depending on fruiting patterns. An edible fig can grow a three-foot shoot in a couple months during the spring, during which period it may be pruned a couple of times and then left alone until it goes dormant the next winter. Even fast-growing herbs don’t need to be pruned more than once every month or two, although if a perfectly groomed specimen is desired, herbs need much more detailed work than slower-growing tropical bonsai or the traditional deciduous or evergreen outdoor bonsai. Because herbs grow so quickly compared to most tropical plants, and their leaves age and yellow in a much shorter time, they need to be pruned more often. A neglected herbal bonsai can show a lot of yellow leaves that are just a natural part of aging. Simply combing the foliage with your fingers will remove most of these leaves; the last few can be removed individually when grooming the herbal specimen for display.

Growing indoor bonsai that produce an edible crop doesn’t have to be difficult. Water a couple times a week, fertilize once a month, prune a couple times a year, repot every couple of years, add supplemental lighting if needed, and harvest your bonsai crop when ready. The varieties discussed in this book will grow in typical potting soils—no need for special bonsai mixes designed for evergreens and deciduous trees. Miniaturizing giant outdoor trees over decades and centuries requires very limited use of fertilizers, but indoor tropical varieties grow year round and need regular feeding. As a rule, most commonly available fertilizers used at recommended strength will work just fine with these bonsai, although some varieties will prefer more acidic fertilizers.

Growing indoor fruiting bonsai is much easier than it sounds and can be very rewarding. Many people have sprouted citrus seeds and grown spindly trees that seldom produce fruit; by using the proper varieties and giving them the correct conditions, a surprising quantity of citrus fruit can be produced even in northern climates. Despite bonsai’s reputation for being difficult to grow and keep alive, anyone who is even moderately successful at growing common houseplants should be able to grow spectacular indoor tropical bonsai that can produce a usable crop. Many plant owners cultivate the same few varieties of common houseplant that have no use beyond their ability to cleanse the air and provide a pleasant atmosphere in the home. Th e primary difference between these common houseplants and edible varieties trained as bonsai is that flowering and fruiting varieties as a rule need bright light, and thus may require supplemental lighting. The number of potentially useful and edible varieties of tropical plants that can be trained as bonsai is large, making possible a distinctive display of green plants unlike those in most homes. Furthermore, serving a guest produce from a beautiful house-plant can add a unique dimension to your hospitality, and makes for a very rewarding experience.