bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - OK, Let's Talk About Roots

A great bonsai would have a healthy root system that allows it to function well, a natural looking nebari at the bottom of the trunk and a gradually tapering trunk that was in scale and looked natural. That said:

Trees that are field grown usually are not grown properly. They are usually pruned -in mass-, on some schedule that is convienient to the big grower-exporter, and the top branches are allowed to grow too much which results in reverse taper.

I look at them as kind of like big, expensive groundsai, for the lack of a better term.

This becomes really apparent when you grow Tridents or Hornbeams from seed. After that first or second year after germinating, when you bareroot them and cut and straighten out the roots, they start to flare really nice at the nebari and so forth. Then you have to deal with the branching and keep the top branches in check so you don't get the reverse taper, which doesn't allow for much trunk thickening etc. If you put them in the ground for 5 years to thicken up you really have to keep up with them, and if your growing alot of them ....well...you get my point. It takes alot of time and effort which most growers don't do.

So you spend $140 for a tree that needs to be totally reshaped if it's even possible with a trunk chop. I know it doesn't make alot of sense but....that seems to be the way it is.

I guess it's a choice between this or this:

These photos are from an article in International Bonsai Magazine 1991 no.2. Bill Valvanis photos. The article is a good one.