Specialty Gardening: Need an ID on this Bonsai, please!, 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
"..... they usually end up with a lot of roots and hard to trim down to fit into a smaller pot when the time comes, stressing the tree."

Developing trees in large containers, in the ground, or yamadori, are all standard procedures for experienced bonsai practitioners, who don't think much about transitioning the trees from their larger containers or from the ground to pots because they are very familiar with the material they are working with, have the patience to reduce the roots gradually, and realize that being able to perform radical root work over time is a skill that is requisite to becoming accomplished in the art.

I think you missed the point. The trees I referred to, growing in containers other than bonsai pots, are indeed bonsai. They are far more refined than most trees many bonsai practitioners would have had in pots for years, and many could go into a (bonsai) pot this year and be pruned/shown next year. I understand that a liner in a pot is not a bonsai by my standards or yours, but if someone new to bonsai thinks it's a bonsai, then by golly, it's a bonsai as long as I have any dealings with its owner as far as I'm concerned. We don't want to be critical of what a person, especially a new person, 'calls' a bonsai because if told different, it's discouraging. We all had to start somewhere and no one of us was accomplished at the outset.

Yes, bonsai is about perspective and age, or the illusion of age, but there are many hundreds of paths we can take with each individual plant to get to where we want to be. How skillfully we choose those paths determines not only the beauty of the outcome of our choices of paths, but also the speed with which we get there. Growing in large containers or in the ground & transitioning the trees to pots allows me to achieve size in my material that would take a lifetime to develop in a confined pot.

Case in point. A Styrax I grew in a raised bed for 4 years. It was cut back hard after 2 years & allowed to grow wild for 2 more. It has a 3" trunk & was 2 m (6 ft) tall when I lifted & chopped it this spring. It's in about 3 gallons of soil, where it will remain as I refine the tree. I'll graft a root to the nebari on the left side where one is needed. The tree has leafed out nicely after a very radical root pruning to get it to fit the container. I'm sure I'll have no difficulty transitioning this tree into a smaller pot. Material of this size would take more than 30 years to develop in a bonsai pot.

Al