Bonsai tree

Source: Bonsai Tonight
A twisting black pine

The back pine below appeared on the turntable and I was asked to make the tree “more beautiful.” What an unusual tree!



Before looking very closely, I immediately got to work plucking old needles. That gave me a chance to study the tree and let me put off figuring out what to do with it. Once the tree was clean, Oyakata – Mr. Tanaka of Aichi-en – asked what I wanted to do with the tree. I said I wanted to make it more compact and wanted a tiny bit of foliage to poke out on the right side. I thought about doing that by bending the top part of the trunk to the right. That would have the effect of undoing the final curve in the trunk. Tanaka suggested that I think about bending the trunk even further to the left. If the tree is funky, go with it, he said. Sounded great to me. I haven’t done a lot of heavy bends on black pines so I had fun wrestling branches with bare hands and jacks to get it into shape.



This opened up quite a few cracks along the branches. I was told they’d heal just fine, so I added cut paste and moved on to the next bend.












When I finished positioning the branches, Tanaka spent a few minutes pointing the branches upwards and moving them closer to the trunk. I had positioned the braches farther apart and pointed the buds outward. Why make the change? Mostly to improve the tree’s silhouette.



It was 10:30 p.m. when I finished working on the tree – about 12 hours in the workshop. What a fun way to start a bonsai vacation!

Here are some shots of the tree from different angeles to offer a better idea of how twisted the thing is.

Front – before	Front – after
Right – before	Right – after
Left side – before	Left side – after
Back – before	Back – after

I’ll be curious to see how the branches withstand the big bends. I’ll ask Peter Tea for a photo if the tree’s still around next year.