I don't expect it to happen immediately and I'm prepared to invest years in my bonsai! Fully intend to crawl around and study as well. Not entirely sure I get your meaning, though. Are you saying I shouldn't pot a couple seedlings and that I should grow from cuttings instead, or that I shouldn't bother at all? Just want to understand
Rook, if I may be so bold, let me explain several things that may not be obvious to someone beginning in this obsession we call bonsai.
Leaving out the primacy of horticulture - knowing how to keep a bonsai alive - it is essential to understand that the trunk is the most important - and least malleable - aspect of a bonsai. It has been said, "Show me a great trunk, and I'll show you a great bonsai," and, "Foliage is merely current events, and branches are just recent news: but the trunk is history."
Therefore, good potential bonsai material means, first and foremost, that it has a good trunk. A good trunk has girth, and often interesting movement and shape and perhaps old scars or deadwood that tell the tree's history. In bonsai, therefore, the trunk does not merely support the branches and foliage, but the opposite: the branches and foliage, essentially, just provide mere support for the trunk - horticulturally, visually, and aesthetically.
For a tree to develop a good trunk of any size, it
must be grown in the ground. Period. End of sentence. Once a tree or seedling or whatever is put into a pot, the trunk's growth is essentially stopped, especially if the pot is a comparatively small one like a bonsai pot. In fact, one reason we confine the roots in such a small pot is exactly to halt the growth of the trunk, and to a certain extent control the growth even of the branches and foliage. In such a pot, while the tree actually does still grow, the growth is so stunted that growth rings become microscopic, such that it would take hundreds of years to create a pleasing trunk of any size in a pot. Beginners fall for the fallacy that they can create a pleasingly impressive bonsai by putting a sapling, or even a seed or cutting, into a bonsai pot and raise it
there: well, yes, you
can do that if you want, but it is affectionately known as "The Three Hundred Year Plan."
As a beginner, you want to go to nurseries and look for trees with thick and interesting trunks - often best found in the "sale" areas or abandoned side areas where the owners throw the stuff they think is too "imperfect " for the typical homeowner to want for the yard. Or go to a "bonsai nursery," or order from a reputable one on-line. Alternatively, if you want to grow your own, you will want to grow stuff in the ground or in really huge pots until the trunks get a decent size. Once in a bonsai pot that is proportional to the tree, their growth will essentially freeze in time, and what you have then is what you will have from then on.
The lure of growing bonsai from seeds, or small cuttings or seedlings appeals to some people on some primitive or philosophical level, but it is not based on the reality of how trees actually grow, and what qualities of a tree make for a pleasing bonsai. Something that looks impressive will satisfy over the years - something that looks pathetic, but creates the wishful illusion of someday looking impressive, will not really hold anybody's interest in the hobby for long, and this is why most people quit.
I hope that helps.
G52
Can I save it for future use (giving you credit of course)?
