Last weekend I was very happy to receive my first ever bonsai tree for my 22nd Birthday!
I paid a visit to BONSAI WORLD with my boyfriend's mum the day before my birthday to choose it myself.
(I've never seen so many in one place!)
I chose a Serissa Japonica, also known as Snow Rose and Tree of a Thousand Stars for it's white flowers.
So here she is, my little Serissa ^o^
Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Bonsai (I've cut the article down a bit):
Bonsai (盆栽, lit. plantings in tray, from bon, a tray or low-sided pot and sai, a planting or plantings,is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers.
The Japanese tradition dates back over a thousand years, and has its own aesthetics and terminology.
The purposes of bonsai are primarily contemplation (for the viewer) and the pleasant exercise of effort and ingenuity (for the grower). By contrast with other plant cultivation practices, bonsai is not intended for production of food, for medicine, or for creating yard-size or park-size gardens or landscapes. Instead, bonsai practice focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container.
The practice of bonsai development incorporates a number of techniques either unique to bonsai or, if used in other forms of cultivation, applied in unusual ways that are particularly suitable to the bonsai domain. These techniques include:
- Leaf trimming, the selective removal of leaves (for most varieties of deciduous tree) or needles (for coniferous trees and some others) from a bonsai's trunk and branches.
- Pruning the trunk, branches, and roots of the candidate tree.
- Wiring branches and trunks allows the bonsai designer to create the desired general form and make detailed branch and leaf placements.
- Clamping using mechanical devices for shaping trunks and branches.
- Grafting new growing material (typically a bud, branch, or root) into a prepared area on the trunk or under the bark of the tree.
- Defoliation, which can provide short-term dwarfing of foliage for certain deciduous species.
- Deadwood bonsai techniques called jin and shari simulate age and maturity in a bonsai.
Small trees grown in containers, like bonsai, require specialized care. Unlike houseplants and other subjects of container gardening, tree species in the wild, in general, grow roots up to several meters long and root structures encompassing several thousand liters of soil. In contrast, a typical bonsai container is under 25 centimeters in its largest dimension and 2 to 10 liters in volume. Branch and leaf (or needle) growth in trees is also large-scale in nature. Wild trees typically grow 5 meters or taller when mature, whereas the largest bonsai rarely exceed 1 meter and most specimens are significantly smaller. These size differences affect maturation, transpiration, nutrition, pest resistance, and many other aspects of tree biology. Maintaining the long-term health of a tree in a container requires some specialized care techniques:
- Watering must be regular and must relate to the bonsai species' requirement for dry, moist, or wet soil.
- Repotting must occur at intervals dictated by the vigour and age of each tree.
- Tools have been developed for the specialized requirements of maintaining bonsai.
- Soil composition and fertilization must be specialized to the needs of each bonsai tree, although bonsai soil is almost always a loose, fast-draining mix of components.
- Location and overwintering are also species-dependent, and it is important to note that few of the traditional bonsai species can survive inside a typical house.
Since we live in an apartment, my Serissa is an indoor bonsai. Here's some information about Indoor Bonsai Trees:
Indoor bonsai are bonsai which are cultivated for the indoor environment. Traditionally, bonsai are temperate climate trees grown outdoors in containers. Kept in the artificial environment of a home, these trees weaken and die. But a number of tropical and sub-tropical tree species will survive and grow indoors. Some of these are suited to bonsai aesthetics and can be shaped much as traditional outdoor bonsai are.
The largest difference between indoor and traditional bonsai is, of course, the enjoyment of an attractive, fully leaved plant in winter instead of a dormant, leafless tree. Other differences include the faster growth rate of tropical plants, which accelerate all steps of the bonsai evolution. Moss covering, a common soil covering for outdoor bonsai, will not survive indoor conditions.
I'll certainly be doing my homework, and hopefully Serissa won't die on me too soon!
