[Bonsai Beginner's weekly thread - 2026 week 42]

Incredible deciduous trees this year.

A local arborist has published a research study on using fire to treat pruning cuts on fire adapted trees in the landscape. She has shown that it increases the speed that the wounds compartmentalize and heal over, with decreased risk for rot.

We had her present her findings today at our bonsai club meeting, and she demonstrated her technique on a large collected coast live oak.

As far as I am aware, this is the first time this technique has been used on a bonsai. Results remain to be seen.

Here's a link to her research:

https://www.elementaltreenetwork.org/_files/ugd/7b4cd7_c976e7c183e74f28a613c99b3035a049.pdf

defoliation, some pruning for taper/movement, one major brach removal, and guy wiring + a little normal wiring. Hoping to find a suitable pot for this in spring so it can really shine!

2 years old Quercus yamadori before styling

Been about a year since I bought this Serissa Japonica Tanuki from a local nursery here in Indonesia. The thing I like about Serissa is its flower. It's so eyes pleasing.

This video is from the previous owner and the reason I bought this bonsai.

Hi folks!
My girlfriend recently gifted me this Juniperus chinensis, and I’m struggling to come up with a styling direction for it.
I can’t really see any particular features or a clear shape that I’d like to highlight. The foliage and branching are also quite messy at the moment.
Most of the branches are long and woody, with very little foliage along their inner sections and most of the green growth concentrated at the tips.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on its potential!
I was thinking of using raffia and wire to bend and reposition some of the branches, possibly lowering them to create a more interesting structure. I’m also considering creating some jin from branches that won’t be part of the final design.
However, I’m completely open to different approaches, so please let me know if you see any interesting features or styling possibilities that I’m overlooking!
Any suggestions regarding the overall style, branch placement, or even the best front would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Carmona bonsai. What do you guys think? Anything i could have done better?

Link to last post here https://www.reddit.com/r/Bonsai/s/4EbpIB05oH

My wiring still sucks but it’s getting a little better. I’m tempted to cut this back to the weaker interior buds to help compress the silhouette more. But I’m choosing to wait until those buds gain more strength next year because I suspect they’ll pick up momentum now that most everything is wired out & light can get in there. Looking forward to pinching next spring now that the majority of the structure’s roughly in place

In celebration of its new pot, today I want to share one of my favorite trees which has great potential for a very beautiful bonsai. The design is not fully at a show-ready stage yet, but I still think it's nice enough to share.

The history: I am the 3rd owner of this tree. The previous owner handed it over to me in the hope of bringing out its best, as he felt stuck with it for a while. I'm unsure of its exact age, but considering the trunk size and color, I'm pretty sure it's decades old.

The vision: It wasn't slanted at this degree originally. The tree used to have a much more formal design that leaned heavily to the right. The decision to make the slant more dramatic is to capture a sense of yearning and longing. The contrast of a soft motion with a massive base will create a striking form.

The journey: It took a while to rearrange the branches and guide them into motion. Now, the work focuses on ramification and keeping the vision in check.

Desmodium (Blue bell) has beautiful flowers. This little one really stands out when it blooms. I'll make sure to share it in full bloom later

(The Q for size comparision)

Taking off half the trunk seemed like a fast way to make a bonsai, but I ended up spending 6 years to build a new apex 😄

Hope you like the work and our attempt to make it educational - any feedback is very welcome!

I recently cut back my Chinese elm. The problem I have now is the new trunk line is straight and I need to add a bit of movement. But the branch is already quite thick and not bendable with wire. Any suggestions or ideas?

Its worst than I thought its literally a colony of ants in this pot. Is this something you would consider acceptable in a recently purchased nursery tree? What’s the best way to remove the ants and their nest while protecting the roots? The tree is already stressed from being in a box for 5 days getting shipped here. I was told by the nursery to use 3 in 1 but that does not seem to kill on contact. I initially had it inside but thankful that I decided to move it outside.

Do you think it would be viable to grow and sell high quality bonsai starts, roots first and stuff, akin to CM bonsai and Mark Comstock's jbp's in europe? Young plants don't get imported from asia and generaly the quality of starters here is very poor, but I don't know if there is interest.

I got this Shangemu (山格木) as raw stock on October 2, 2022. It’s still in development after four years in my care.
I’ve selected the branches I want to develop and am letting them grow out for now.
Just a short clip from watering today, showing its current state.

As promised, the one which deserves it's own post.

It's a Shimpaku Juniper, and let me tell you the pictures don't do justice to the first bend. It drops and runs almost flat before the apex picks up, and the live vein runs through the deadwood the whole length of it.

2nd picture for a closeup, as someone relatively new and exploring this was a stunning piece of art, the meticulous effort into making that bend and one can tell it wasn't done in a night - it would have been multiple attempts of bending it little by little as to not break the trunk. I stood there for a while soaking in the bend, the wiring, and the shape of the tree.

Just beautiful.

Ended up doing some hard chops on this awhile back. The lower branches are starting to back bud

Eventually I will air layer the top left but that's next season probably

I was really nervous about what to expect going to my first bonsai club meeting but I had a really good experience. I got to talk to other people and someone wired my tree while showing me how to wire trees. Then I let someone borrow my raffia to fix the broken branch on their tree.

It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to go to the next meeting. They said I'm taking good care of my tree and they look healthy so I'm proud of myself.

First and foremost, I hope I’m not breaking any rules. I’m trying my best.

Also a disclaimer: I tried to post this yesterday on Bonsai Nut but I feel the site is a bit buggy since my post appears and disappears from my profile, while also not having been approved yet. I suppose I’m too new there to not be considered a threat.

Hi everyone, happy to be a newcomer to this really cool hobby. I started with Bonsai this year around April (northern hemisphere) and have now gathered many different trees and have many different projects going on. I’ve definitely made many mistakes and have probably caused a tree or two to found themselves in a state which isn’t compatible with life. Most of them do look promising, so I hope I can at some point share something I can be proud of.

But to the point of this post: Yesterday I found a specimen of a particular cultivar of Ginkgo, called Colonnare Maris. I had seen this particular tree many times this year already at the garden section of a hardware store. With me being a noob and not wanting to spend much on a tree I might irreparably harm, I decided to let it be. Yesterday however, I saw that it was 50% off and it also looked so beautiful in yellow that I finally took it home.

By now I’ve seen plenty of different styles of Bonsai, and due to the nature of this specific cultivar, I was very excited to try training this tree into a Kabudachi. Frankly it already looks like many trunks fused together at the base, so I figured this would be a great new project for me to start.

I now turn to you more knowledgeable people for some enlightenment as to how I might choose to proceed next.

My plan is to make sure that the tree is strong and healthy when spring arrives, since I plan on doing some air layering on it. I honestly cannot bring myself to cut and discard ginkgo branches as though they didn’t need ages to get to this size.

Also, I want to get the tree into a smaller pot than the one it’s in right now at some point. I’m not a huge guy and while I can move it around a bit, I would rather not have to do it if it weighs half of me.

My thinking was that I could use some guy wire through winter to start shaping the multiple trunks to point outwards (already have the wire in place), all while keeping the tree in its current pot in a wind-protected area of the garden, but my partner made a good point about maybe putting it in the ground to protect the roots in winter. That would thwart my idea of the guy wire, though, since I have no other anchors but the rim of the pot itself. He then suggested I put the whole pot in the ground, which sounds feasible to me, although I would probably drill a couple more drainage holes to be safe.

Is there anything that would deem the plan less than optimal? I would then repot as early as possible in the spring (maybe late winter?) so that the tree has enough time to grow and harden leaves before I start air layering.

As for the main tree itself, I would keep it relatively compact after the air layers have been removed and wouldn’t do any drastic wiring or pruning during the growing season in order not to stress it too much.

Does my plan sound sensible or do you think I should operate differently? I’m open to suggestions and ideas.

Thanks a lot 

PS: cat pictures as payment. Hope they are enough :)

I don’t have a before photo on hand, but I can tell you it was only a few roots when I got this tree in the mail lol. It was an import that I got in June.

Anyways, I pulled it from its pot only because I had noticed the leftover water in the drip tray was pretty stinky. Smelled like death. But I found no mushy roots, no decay, just a vigorous and healthy root system, and the smell? Well it smelled healthy, like roots and earth.

I think the foul smell is because of all of the decaying ladybug corpses that are currently mixed in there, they have all started to grow mold and look gross. I had bought a couple thousand ladybugs a few weeks ago to annihilate an aphid infestation, which they absolutely did. But as expected, a lot of them were nearing the end of their lifecycle, so this tree became their gravesite.

I cleaned up the top soil a bit and just put it back in its pot. Maybe next summer I will prune the rootball. I think it’s fine for now.

Thoughts?

Can't believe it happened to me! All the way in the back of a local garden center, tangled in some larger trees. Who knows how long it was there. They were having a half off sale and a lot of old scraggly plants, really unhealthy looking. Hard to believe this beauty was among them. My guess is it was passed over in favor of larger beeches over time.

Not sure what the plan is yet but I will most likely just reduce it when spring comes and see how I feel about chopping the trunk high up. Absolutely love the smooth bark and stature. It's a little over 4' tall overall.