59 Fun Facts About Bonsai

What does the Japanese word 'bonsai' literally mean?

Pot planting is the literal sense: bon is a tray or pot and sai is a planting. Nothing in the word means small or tree, so the name describes the container rather than the plant.

Japanese bonsai grew out of which older Chinese practice?

Penjing reached Japan as souvenirs: more than a thousand years ago, envoys and Buddhist students returning from China carried container plantings home, and Japanese growers later pared the art down to a single tree.

What is Korea's equivalent art of miniature potted trees called?

Bunjae is Korea's art of miniature potted trees; the word is the Korean reading of the same two characters, 盆栽, that Japanese reads as bonsai.

A tree collected from the wild for training as bonsai is known by what Japanese term?

Yamadori are often the most prized and costly bonsai, because poor soil and hardship in the wild have already spent decades stunting and ageing the tree before a grower ever digs it up.

What Japanese term names the spread of surface roots at the base of a bonsai?

Nebari is the visible flare of surface roots where the trunk meets the soil; a wide, even nebari is prized because it makes a small tree look old and stable.

In which 1980s film series does a teenager spend his college fund on a bonsai shop for his mentor?

The Karate Kid's Daniel LaRusso puts up the money in Part III (1989) and Mr. Miyagi makes him a partner; when thieves strip the shop, Daniel risks a cliff climb for a rare tree Miyagi had brought from Okinawa.

Around the 14th century, dwarf potted trees in Japan were called 'hachi no ki', which means what?

Hachi no ki means 'the bowl's tree': hachi is a bowl or fairly deep pot and ki is tree. The term named Japan's dwarf potted trees for centuries before 'bonsai' replaced it.

In the Noh play Hachi no Ki, a poor samurai burns his last three potted trees to warm which guest?

A travelling monk, snowbound at his door, gets the fire. He proves to be the regent Hōjō Tokiyori in disguise, who later restores the samurai's lost land and adds three estates named for the plum, cherry and pine.

Japan's Sandai Shogun no Matsu, a bonsai pine once tended by a 17th-century shogun, is thought to be at least how old?

500 years is the cautious estimate: the pine was already old when a shogun took charge of it in the 1600s, and generations of palace gardeners have kept the same tree alive ever since.

The ancient bonsai Sandai Shogun, 'the third shogun', is named for which ruler who tended it?

Tokugawa Iemitsu, third of his line, was so absorbed in his potted trees that, in one story, a councillor flung a favourite into the garden to shame him back to work; he kept growing them anyway.

Which emperor moved his court to Tokyo in 1868, where bonsai went on display inside and outside his palace?

Meiji started a lasting custom: bonsai have had a part in palace affairs ever since, with prized trees carried in to welcome state guests.

Which shaping material entered Japanese bonsai practice around 1910, replacing string, rope and burlap?

Wire let growers bend a branch exactly where they wanted and sell the tree at once; the hobby boomed, though so did the number of trees scarred by wire left on too long.

Which bonsai tool did toolsmith Masakuni I devise so that a removed branch heals without a bump?

The concave cutter bites a shallow hollow where a branch is removed, so the wound closes flush. Masakuni I, a maker of flower-arranging scissors, brought it out in the 1920s soon after the first shears made for bonsai.

What is Japan's most prestigious bonsai exhibition, first held in Tokyo in 1934 and now staged every February?

Kokufu-ten trees are entered under their owners' names, though professionals usually prepare them; before the war the show ran twice a year, in spring and autumn.

A 'tanuki' bonsai, a live sapling fixed to old deadwood, is named after which trickster of Japanese folklore?

The raccoon dog, or tanuki, is the shape-shifting trickster of Japanese folk tales, and the word also means a sly person: a fitting name for a young tree dressed up as an ancient one.

Under what title was Yoshimura and Halford's 1957 bonsai 'bible for westerners' later reissued?

The Art of Bonsai is the later title of The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees and Landscapes, which Yuji Yoshimura wrote in English with his student Giovanna Halford after opening bonsai classes to foreigners in Tokyo in 1952.

Which Japanese volcanic clay, sold in graded granules, is the staple of bonsai soil mixes worldwide?

Akadama holds water yet drains freely, but its granules crumble after a couple of years and choke off the air, one reason bonsai need repotting so regularly.

What sets the formal upright style, chokkan, apart from the informal upright?

A perfectly straight trunk, tapering evenly from base to tip, defines chokkan; it copies a tree grown in open light with no rivals to dodge, whereas the informal upright bends as it climbs.

In the full cascade style, kengai, where does the apex of the tree end up?

In a full cascade (kengai) the apex drops below the base of the pot, mimicking a tree growing over water or down a mountainside; a semi-cascade (han-kengai) stops at or just beneath the rim.

What is the Japanese name of the informal upright style, with visible curves in the trunk?

Moyogi, the informal upright, has a trunk that curves gently as it rises yet ends with its tip above the base; it is among the commonest styles because so many trees grow that way in nature.

The 'broom' bonsai style, hokidachi, with a straight trunk and ball crown, is typically used for which trees?

Elms suit hokidachi because they branch so finely: the trunk stops about a third of the way up and fans into twigs, a ball crown that looks its best bare in winter, like an upturned broom.

Fukinagashi, which in everyday Japanese means a fluttering streamer, names which bonsai style?

Windswept trees have every branch, and often the trunk, streaming to one side, as if a gale never stopped blowing; the style is meant to show a tree that has survived everything nature threw at it.

The raft style, ikadabuki, mimics what natural event?

A tree toppled on its side sprouting new trunks is what the raft copies: growers lay a trunk flat in the soil so the branches on top grow on as a row of trunks sharing one set of roots.

The trees in a yose ue forest planting traditionally total what kind of number?

An odd number is the convention, at least until there are too many trees to count; they are also set in a staggered pattern, never a straight row, so the group reads as a natural stand.

What separates the two rock-planting styles, sekijoju and ishitsuki?

Roots wrap the stone vs roots grow inside it: in sekijoju they clasp the rock and reach soil in the pot below, while an ishitsuki tree lives in soil packed into the rock's own cracks, so the rock is its pot.

In deadwood technique, what does 'jin' refer to?

Bark stripped from a whole branch leaves a jin, the bleached stub of a limb that wind, lightning or age seems to have killed; the same effect on the trunk is called shari.

Bonsai's 'no trace of the artist' rule puts a pruning scar where?

At the back of the tree, out of the viewer's sight, is the usual place; failing that, the cut is disguised as storm damage, its stub carved like a limb torn off by wind or lightning.

Bonsai aesthetics discourage which quality in branch and root placement?

Symmetry is deliberately broken: designers alternate branches left, right and back, never setting two at the same height or letting two reach the same distance from the trunk.

Which Japanese aesthetic concept, beauty in imperfection and transience, informs bonsai design?

Wabi-sabi is why bonsai prize rough bark, deadwood and hollow trunks, all marks of passing time, and why many are shown bare in winter rather than in full leaf.

A traditional indoor bonsai display has the tree, a hanging scroll, and what third element?

The shitakusa companion plant stands for the foreground, the scroll for the background, and all three are chosen to evoke a season.

In a traditional Japanese home, where is a formal bonsai display usually placed?

In the tokonoma alcove, the room's place of honour, where scrolls and flowers are also shown; by custom the most important guest is seated in front of it.

As a rule of thumb, evergreen bonsai are shown in what kind of pot?

Evergreens such as pines and junipers are usually shown in unglazed pots in earth tones, while deciduous and flowering trees get glazed pots whose colour plays off leaves or blooms.

Which Japanese town, together with Yixing in China, is famous for producing collectible bonsai pots?

Tokoname, in Aichi Prefecture, is one of Japan's Six Ancient Kilns, firing pottery since the 12th century; besides prized bonsai pots it turns out red clay teapots and, less glamorously, drainpipes and toilets.

Which school of Buddhism, taught in medieval Japan by visiting Chinese monks, shaped the spare look of bonsai?

Zen monks from China taught in Japan's monasteries and showed its rulers miniature landscapes as a fitting pastime for men of taste; under Zen influence growers stripped away figurines and fuss to leave one tree.

What name is given to the very largest class of bonsai, trees that can stand taller than a person?

Imperial bonsai take their name from the enormous potted trees of Japan's Imperial Palace, grown large enough to hold their own in its vast state rooms.

Which of these is true of indoor bonsai in Japan?

Traditional practice does not include them: Japanese bonsai are temperate trees kept outdoors year-round and brought inside only briefly for display, because they weaken and die in a heated house.

Which tree genus, like the jade plant, can live indoors all year as a bonsai?

Ficus trees are tropical figs, so they need no cold winter rest, and their waxy leaves shrug off the dry air of a heated room: the usual first 'indoor bonsai' for beginners.

When are deciduous bonsai generally repotted and root-pruned?

Deciduous bonsai are repotted and root-pruned as they leave dormancy in spring, just as buds swell, so cut roots regrow fast; repotting prevents pot-binding and encourages fresh feeder roots.

The Yamaki Pine at the US National Arboretum is famous for surviving what?

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima blew in the Yamaki family's windows about three kilometres away, yet a garden wall shielded the pine; its donor never mentioned this, and the museum learned of it only when his grandsons visited in 2001.

Japan's gift of 53 bonsai to the United States marked which occasion?

The 53 trees, chosen by the Nippon Bonsai Association, were Japan's gift for the US Bicentennial of 1976 and became the founding collection of the bonsai museum at the US National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.

John Naka's masterpiece Goshin is a forest of eleven junipers, each representing what?

One of his grandchildren stands behind each tree: Naka had seven when he first planted the group as a forest in 1964, and he kept adding junipers as more were born, reaching eleven by 1973.

What does the name of John Naka's forest bonsai 'Goshin' mean?

Protector of the spirit was Naka's choice because a grove of cedars beside a Japanese shrine had inspired the planting; friends pressed him to name it once it reached seven trees.

Bonsai master John Naka famously refused to teach in Japan, comparing it to what?

Preaching to Buddha was how Naka put it: he taught all over the world yet never held a class in Japan. Born in Colorado, he built his art in Los Angeles on local trees such as the California juniper.

Omiya Bonsai Village was settled in 1925 by nurserymen fleeing what disaster in Tokyo?

The Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 wrecked the growers' Tokyo nurseries, so they went looking for better land and in 1925 founded a self-governing village at Omiya; by 1930 it held about 30 gardens.

Saikei differs from bonsai by creating what?

Saikei builds a tray landscape of rocks, soil and plants rather than a single tree; Toshio Kawamoto developed it after the war from young, cheap material, and his 1963 English-language book introduced it to Western readers.

Suiseki, often displayed alongside bonsai, are what?

Suiseki are naturally formed viewing stones: the rule is that nature alone shapes them, with no carving or polishing, and the best suggest a mountain, island or waterfall in miniature.

The earliest-known picture of Chinese miniature tree landscapes, from the year 706, was found where?

A mural in a Tang prince's tomb holds it: servants in Crown Prince Zhanghuai's burial corridor carry trays of miniature rockwork and fruit trees, proof the art was already fashionable at court.

When Japanese growers renamed their potted trees 'bonsai' in place of 'hachiue', what change in the container did the word signal?

A shallower pot came with the new word: growers had finally learned to keep a tree healthy in very little soil, which the older, deeper containers had never demanded.

In 2014 the artist Makoto Azuma made headlines by sending a 50-year-old pine bonsai where?

Into the stratosphere: a balloon launched from Nevada's Black Rock Desert lifted the white pine, hung in a light metal frame, about 30 kilometres up while cameras recorded the flight.

Why do growers deliberately defoliate a healthy deciduous bonsai in early summer?

To force smaller new leaves: the tree answers with a second crop that can be half the size, and with finer twigs too, but the shock is severe, so only vigorous trees of suitable species are treated.

Which source of bonsai material is rarely used, because a suitably aged look would take too long?

Seeds are rarely used because a seedling needs at least three years before it can even be shaped; and there is no such thing as a 'bonsai seed': growers sow ordinary tree seed.

Large bonsai are classed as 'two-handed' or 'four-handed' according to what?

The number of men needed to move them sets the class, counted in hands; the scale then runs down through 'one-handed' trees to palm-sized and even fingertip-sized miniatures.

The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum stands in which prefecture, just north of Tokyo?

Saitama is home to the museum, a few minutes' walk from the bonsai village; the 'Omiya' in its name survives from the separate city that merged into Saitama City in 2001.

What is a bonsai 'sacrifice branch' left to grow long and wild for?

Thicken the trunk below it: a shoot allowed to run wild feeds the trunk beneath, fattening it fast; once the trunk is stout enough the branch is cut off, hence 'sacrifice'.

What is the top prize at the Nippon Bonsai Sakufu-ten, Japan's leading contest for professionals?

The Prime Minister Award crowns the Sakufu-ten, the show where professional growers enter trees under their own names instead of their clients'.

Which bonsai style, a slender bare trunk with a little foliage at the top, copies trees in Chinese ink paintings?

Literati is the English for bunjin, the scholar-painters whose spare ink landscapes showed lone trees clinging to crags, and the style copies that look, with branches pared to a minimum.

Kokedama, a Japanese cousin of bonsai, wraps a plant's ball of soil in what instead of a pot?

Moss gives kokedama its name, literally 'moss ball': soil is packed around the roots, wrapped in a living green skin and bound with string, a style that grew out of bonsai and its accent plantings.

Japan's early-19th-century bonsai scholars took many of their terms from which Chinese painting text?

The Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, a Chinese primer on painting trees and rocks, gave Japan's scholars both their vocabulary and their models: enthusiasts rebuilt its idealised painted trees in living wood.

Satsuki bonsai, named for the fifth month of the old Japanese calendar when they bloom, are which flowering shrub?

Azalea is the answer: satsuki bloom in May and June, later than most azaleas, and one plant can carry flowers of several colours and patterns at once, which is why whole shows are devoted to them.