John Boyce covered much of the basics in his talk on Japanese Black Pines Sunday the 17th at the Collection North. This was the fourth in a new series of demonstrations targeted to beginners and intended to reach out to the surrounding community. It has long been the goal of the GSBF organization to increase public awareness of bonsai; the Collection North is furthering that by offering this series of interesting and informative lectures by well-known Bay Area bonsai practitioners.

As many club members are aware John has been doing bonsai for more than 35 years and is renowned for his work on pines and especially for his literati style trees. For this demonstration he had a one-gallon Japanese Black Pine that had been worked on only minimally and was about 12 years old. The material was roughly in shape, with some movement in the trunk and foliage close to the trunk. John started the talk by explaining some of the ways that trees grow. Pines naturally grow their branches in whorls of five, where Elms have alternating branches and Maples have two branches at a junction. As pines mature, the limbs sag downward under their own weight, however, for maples and elms the branches tend upward even in older trees. Despite the natural tendancy of pine limbs to grow in whorls, John explained that the bonsai-ist finds that a single branch at one point in the trunk is usually the most aesthetically pleasing. In some cases two branches are used but only if one is significantly larger than the other, and the larger one is more prominent in the design.

John continued on to pine maintenance and training by showing a few diagrams illustrating the sequence of how to form branches. Existing long branches are wired into shape, old needles are removed and candles are cut, all to encourage back budding. Once the back budding occurs, and the new buds start to form branchlets, the longer coarser growth at the tip is removed. Over the course of years of training the branch structure can be refined more and more. John made a point to stop and say that once you start training a tree as a bonsai you cannot stop. That is to say that you should feel the desire to carry your vision and hope for the tree through many years of effort to an ever-more-pleasing result. “The tree’s job is to grow, and it does it quite well;” the bonsai-ists job is to direct that growth so that the tree becomes all that it can.

John removed many of the longer older needles and wired the branches in a rough styling of the material. He indicated that, as with much material, the top of this tree could be removed to shorten it by wiring up a branch to form the new apex. But he cautioned that because of the relative youth of this tree that he would advise allowing the top to grow for a couple more years before removing it. This will give the tree more strength and fatten the trunk as well while the branches are being trained. The tree was in need of repotting, but John cautioned that this should only be done in the spring for pines.

John has often said, and he repeated at this demonstration, that bonsai is a long-term endeavor. This tree will be fantastic after 30 years of careful cultivation, and that is what it deserves.

John is the instructor for the BSSF second Saturday workshops. If you are interested in taking workshops speak with him or myself about available space.

Tags: Collection North, Demonstrations, Pines