Found a chinese elm for sale

Larry

The flower shop in the town hgd a delivery today and i noticed a small group of bonsai!
High hopes I thought, they even had a chinese elm!
I picked it up and saw the usual-a badly styled tree with a very thick trunk(the only good thing about it) and a spidery mass of branches like a badly styled broom.
Also the nebari, while present was badly done, with one section terminating above soil as a stump-not good!
The worst thing was the price-£9.99!
Almost tempting but a tenner is a lot of money for a nice pot with a tree in it!
Why is it always the same,overpriced and poor quality bonsai given the label Indoor bonsai and sold as trendy plants!
I left well alone.....

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RedPine

You already said 1/2 the answer.."trendy".Now combine that 1/2 with the fact that 99% of the world doesn't know any better.

1/2+1/2=mallsai




[QOUTE=Larry]
I left well alone.....[/QUOTE]
Good for you Larry!When people stop buying them store owners will stop selling them.

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mkonig

Hi Larry
What do you expect for £9.99? Perfect nebari and a well tapered trunk with estabilshed and ramified branches? I wouldn't!

I would view this as very rough starter material and to my mind all that any starter material needs is time, patience and good care.
The tree in the attached photo is the top that was layered of a tree that was grown from just such a £9.99 "indoor bonsai".

The original tree was a present from some well meaning colleagues about 10 years ago. I accepted it with thanks and planted it straight in to my grow bed. Lots of water and heavy feeding made it grow to nearly five foot and it simply got chopped back with hedge shears every summer. I then chopped the top and transplanted it in to a large pot to grow on. The top was layerd of two years ago and is doing well, the donor tree is being developed in to a nearly 3 foot tall mother daughter style tree. I'll take some photos and post this weekend.

I should think that was worth the £9.99- It has given me the opportunity to learn about the specie, helped to develop my skills and the end result is always what counts.

Think out of the box my friend! Not every "tree" in a pot is a bonsai, but some can be made to be!

Regards
Mike

Attached Images

Chinese Elm.jpg (32.5 KB, 69 views)

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Aaron_K

Hi Mike,

Firstly, what a lovely tree, and I agree with you. For £10 you aren't going to get a masterpiece of a bonsai. At best, you are going to get raw material in a bonsai pot. With bonsai, one has to think in the long term and not disregard what is immediately infront of you, especially if you cannot afford top quality stock or find good yamadori.

Larry, if the bonsai in the flowershop had a nice thick trunk and just a mass of branches - concentrate on the trunk. Remove some/all the branches and start again from scratch. Nebari can be removed and regrown too. £10 for a tree is not too steep if you can create something very rewarding x amount of years down the line.

Mike has created something quite wonderful here from something you would probably snub and turn your nose up at initally. I'd love to see some pics of the mother and daughter donor tree!

All the best,

Aaron

jeremy_norbury

I'm sure there are cheaper ways to get your chinese elms.

Small ones here are €4EURO ($5), GBP 3.35.

Got a nice "bunch" of FOUR last week at Lodders. The small ones were €4, the twin trunk €5 and the left-most one was €4.40. Beer is less than €1 and this empty one is worth 25cents. Using the bonsai-nursery version of bistro-math (Hitchhikers guide...) I got them all for the princely sum of €15. (GBP10)

Here they are.

Let me know if you want me to get you some next time I am there...

Jerry

Attached Images

IMG_0618.jpg (43.3 KB, 61 views)

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Ashbarns9999

At one time i used to smile angrily at what you call mallsai. Then someone convinced me that it was good for the promotion of bonsai wordwide so i went along with that theory for a while until i couldn't stomach that concept anymore. So i wrote 'Stayin Alive' (article contest) just to try and stop the carnage and help those relationships where a 'bonsai' was gifted and two months later, ex tree, blame dished out, strained relations. I once bought a tree from our local Woolworth store it had been neglected for a few weeks and i offered them $3aus for the pot. The Cedrus Atlantica glauca is thriving. We are not tree liberationists but yes i think the mallsai mentally should be discouraged. This can only be achieved with education, perhaps a small budget be set aside by the major groups to promote this in the written media. Just a thought. Ash

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Larry

unfortunately I dont have 9.99 to spend willy nilly on maybe trees.Money is rather tight and i want a good tree fopr that money, in fact I would much rather start from a cutting or air layer.

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rockm

"unfortunately I dont have 9.99 to spend willy nilly on maybe trees.Money is rather tight and i want a good tree fopr that money, in fact I would much rather start from a cutting or air layer."

Huh? This makes absolutely no sense. You say you want a good tree for the money, yet when an opporunity to get a reasonable (and probably correctable) nebari attached to an apparently nice trunk (Which would take ten years to get with a cutting or an air layer--which will cost you more in time and resources--fertilizer, water, care, repotting, etc-- than this tree would) you turn your nose up at it. If you wouldn't buy it, why mention it here?

Reasonably-priced mallsai (and face it, 9 pounds, dollars, whatever, is a pretty decent buy for a bonsai, even a bad one) can be excellent starter material, especially fast growing hardy species like elms or ficus. You buy with the expectation not of retaining the existing bad design, but for the bare bones of the tree's structure.

Larry

Its simple, i dont have money to throw around, on a very tight budget right now as I'm on reduced hours at work thanks to my boss.
So 9.99 is a lot when you dont have it!
(That covers a pack of diapers for 2 weeks)

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