Introduction to the Styles of Red Maple Bonsai and Common Styling Features
Red maple bonsai is also known as purple-red Japanese maple or red duck-foot maple. Red maples are relatively easy to cultivate, so they are often made into bonsai, which gives them even higher ornamental value. So what styles of red maple bonsai are there?
Red Maple Bonsai
For propagating red maple, green maple, Japanese maple, or trident maple can be used as rootstock, and grafting is carried out in summer when the plant is growing vigorously, using the bud grafting or approach grafting method. The rootstock can be either a 2- to 4-year-old seedling or a 2-year-old branch sprouted from an old stump that has grown for many years and is quaint and plain. A successfully grafted plant can be transplanted before it buds in spring. After planting, water it thoroughly, place it in a bright location for care, and spray water frequently to maintain relatively high air humidity. After the plant is established, apply a diluted, well-rotted liquid fertilizer once every 20 to 30 days to promote its growth.
Red maple can be made into different forms of bonsai according to the shape of the tree stump, such as the formal upright style, slanting style, curved-trunk style, waterside style, and cascade style; several plants can also be planted together in one pot to make bonsai in forms such as the double-trunk style, three-trunk style, and forest style. When making a forest-style bonsai, choose plants of different heights and sizes and plant them in groups, and pair them with rocks, moss, and other accessories to express the mood of "a maple forest drunk with color." Because its leaves are relatively large, the crown should not be made into cloud-pad or cloud-cluster shapes; it can be pruned into a natural style that is coordinated in height and elegant and flowing. The styling method is mainly pruning, supplemented by wiring; some branches can be pulled to make the layout reasonable. Red maple bonsai is suitable for white stone pots, green glazed ceramic pots, and yellow zisha pots, but pots in colors close to the leaf color, such as red or purple, should not be used.
[Bonsai Art] Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names
Indoor flower bonsai is selected from the elite among trees and flowers. It can not only help us green our living environment, but also has a certain air-purifying effect. Some bonsai not only have good ornamental value, but also have certain medicinal value, allowing people to cultivate their character and enrich the joys of their lives. This is also a kind of hobby for leisure time. How much do we know about indoor flower bonsai? Below, the editor will introduce to you a complete collection of indoor flower bonsai pictures and names.
[Introduction to Bonsai Art]
Bonsai art first appeared in China. It is a unique traditional art of the Han ethnic group and a treasure of garden art. It mainly uses bonsai to create images, express natural landscapes and social life to people, and express the thoughts and feelings behind creating bonsai as a kind of social ideology. The traditional schools of Chinese bonsai are divided into five major schools, namely the northern and southern schools. The southern school mainly represents the Lingnan school of Guangzhou, while the northern school mainly includes the Sichuan school, Suzhou school, Shanghai school, and Yangzhou school in the Yangtze River basin, among others. Bonsai art achieves a harmonious unity of natural landscape and artistic landscape, thus forming a unique style with a great variety of types, countless postures, exposed root plates, neat arrangement, elegant and lush crowns, flourishing plants, well-spaced density, and a combination of hardness and softness.
[Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names — Wintersweet Bonsai]
Wintersweet bonsai blooms in the cold winter season. It has the ability to defy the cold and stand proudly against frost, expressing a character of unyielding resistance in the face of brutality, giving people spiritual inspiration and allowing them to enjoy a kind of beauty. Wintersweet bonsai is generally suitable for planting in courtyards, and is especially suitable for viewing as an old-stump bonsai and as modeling art. It is a very ideal precious flowering plant for winter.
[Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names — Elm Bonsai]
Elm bonsai comes from old elm stumps growing in the wild. After years of chopping and chiseling by people, as well as erosion by wind and rain and gnawing by animals, they gradually form strange elm bonsai in many different postures. The roots of elm bonsai have shapes such as gnarled and intertwined roots, vigorous and quaint, turning the rotten into something magical, dead roots with new leaves, and a world of their own. These are the preferred materials people use for elm bonsai. The styling is very beautiful, and they are personalized potted plants.
[Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names — Orange Jessamine Bonsai]
The inflorescence of orange jessamine bonsai is terminal or also axillary. When the flowers are in full bloom, they are umbel-like, a shortened panicle arrangement, and especially beautiful. The flowers are white and carry a rich fragrance. The flower shape has ovate sepals and is oblong. When the flowers are in full bloom, they are recurved. The stamens number 10 petals, and their lengths are different. They are especially beautiful.
[Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names — Yew Bonsai]
The yew has anti-cancer medicinal value, and it grows very slowly in nature, making it a rare treasure. It is a bonsai plant with a very beautiful shape and especially great artistic value.
[Complete Collection of Indoor Flower Bonsai Pictures and Names — Red Maple Bonsai]
Red maple is also called red-leaf feather maple. It is a variety of Japanese maple in the Aceraceae family and is a deciduous tree plant. Its plant height is generally 2-4 m. Its branches and leaves are numerous, and it is slender and smooth. The leaf branches of red maple tend toward purple-red, especially dazzling, and it has very good ornamental value.
The above is the complete collection of indoor flower bonsai pictures and names introduced to you by the editor. I hope it brings great help when you grow bonsai. Thank you for your appreciation.
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Tree Stump Bonsai Classification of Bonsai
Tree Stump Bonsai
1. Definition of Tree Stump Bonsai
Woody plants are planted in pots and, through the artistic shaping process of pruning, binding, and training, as well as careful cultivation and technical management, are made into bonsai that are miniature versions of quaint, elegant, strange, and grand trees. They are generally controlled so that the stems are short, the branches are crooked, the roots are exposed and claw-like, the posture is aged, and the tree age is several decades or more than a hundred years, with some reaching several hundred years while only a little more than one chi or several chi tall. This is because, when making them, old tree stumps that have already grown for many years in mountain forests or nurseries, initially possessing gnarled roots, thick and short stems, and easy formability, are selected as materials for cultivation. Therefore they are calledtree stump bonsai。
2. Characteristics of Tree Stump Bonsai
Those that use trees as the main material, are planted in pots, and are shaped for scenery are collectively calledtree bonsai. In the past they were customarily called tree stump bonsai (abbreviated as "stump scenery"). Trees are living plant bodies. During their growth process, as tree age increases and seasons change, they constantly undergo morphological changes. Different tree species have endlessly varying scenery content: some win by exposed roots and crooked trunks; some excel by leaf shape and leaf color; some create scenery by flowers and fruit. The tree posture should strive to be quaint, elegant, vigorous, and strange; the colors should be rich, and the charm should be clear and elegant. This is the basic requirement and technique of the art of tree bonsai styling.
Forest-Style Tree Stump Bonsai
Tree bonsai is a miniature of the graceful postures of trees in nature. Generally, tree species with short plants, dense branches and fine leaves, quaint form, and relatively long lifespans are suitable as materials. After potting, according to their growth characteristics and artistic requirements, through technical measures such as wiring, branch training, pruning, leaf thinning, and bud pinching, artworks more beautiful and colorful than natural tree postures are created. Although they are less than a chi tall, they have features such as curved trunks and crooked branches, quaint elegance, lush green leaves, and bright flowers and fruit.
Tree stump bonsai emphasizes the compositional beauty of the overall posture and lines of the trunk, crown, roots, branches and leaves, flowers, and fruit. Some tree stump bonsai can produce bright and beautiful flowers, and with good scale and proportion, they are truly icing on the cake. However, posture should not be neglected in pursuit of flowers and fruit. If the plant's posture is not good, it cannot be considered a good work, and may not even be called bonsai. Therefore, tree stump bonsai must first emphasize posture and styling, striving to be quaint and elegant, vigorous and lush. Although the body is small, the sense of space is quite large, achieving the artistic conception of "hiding the meaning of towering sky and covering earth within a handful."
3. Specifications of Tree Stump Bonsai
Tree bonsai specifications are divided into sizes. According to size and height, tree stump bonsai has a total offive specifications. Extra-large ones exceed 150 cm in height, large ones are 80-150 cm, medium ones are 40-80 cm, small ones are 10-40 cm, and those less than 10 cm tall are called miniature bonsai or pocket bonsai. The smallest category among them is called miniature bonsai, also known as "palm bonsai." Because the pot area is narrow and small, the materials used are characterized by tiny volume, delicate styling, exquisite workmanship, and concise lines, fully reflecting the artistic beauty of miniature bonsai. (For horizontal, slanting, lying, and cascade types, the extended length of their branches and trunk is used as the standard.)
Extra-Large Bonsai
Large Bonsai
Medium Bonsai
Miniature Bonsai
Tree stump bonsai often uses a solitary tree as the main body. There are also forms made by combining two, three, or multiple trees into a forest style. Single-plant forms also include one plant with double trunks or one plant with multiple trunks. Sometimes they are also paired with strange rocks, or ceramic models of people or objects, or given corresponding terrain treatment to enhance the tree's momentum.
4. Types of Tree Stump Bonsai
According to differences in the types of plant materials used and differences in ornamental characteristics, tree stump bonsai is divided intopine and cypress, miscellaneous wood, foliage wood, flowering wood, fruiting wood, and vine woodand so on.
(1) Pine and Cypress
Cypress
Pine and cypress bonsai is formed by cultivating and shaping materials from gymnosperm tree species of the pine and cypress category. Its characteristics are a quaint and vigorous posture, plain and strange, leaves like needles, tolerance of drought and cold, and a relatively long lifespan. The styling method follows nature, whether a single tree standing tall, two trees paired, or three to five in a clump, often using the tall-trunk large-tree type of "towering to the sky and covering the earth" and "uneven heights." Cypress bonsai often uses twisted sinews and changed bones, with withered peaks and exposed tops, to express their quaint and strange appearance. Pine and cypress bonsai materials are abundant, and commonly used species include five-needle pine, black pine, whitebark pine, Huangshan pine, golden larch, dragon juniper, Chinese juniper, shore juniper, true juniper, arhat cypress, and dwarf yew, among others.
(2) Miscellaneous Wood
Banyan
Miscellaneous wood bonsai uses broadleaf tree species as materials, selecting those with strange postures, upright and elegant branches and leaves, long lifespans, and strong adaptability, and forms a type of bonsai through careful cultivation and shaping. Miscellaneous wood bonsai often collects wild tree stumps from mountains and fields, cultivates and ages them, and pots them. In a relatively short time, they can be processed into stump scenery with raised roots and exposed claws, crooked and aged forms, twisted branches and trunks, small leaves and abundant flowers, and pleasant charm. Commonly used tree species include Chinese elm, chaste tree, boxwood, Japanese bush cherry, orange jessamine, Fujian tea, banyan, wintergreen, and water poplar, among others. This type of bonsai emphasizes beauty of posture and charm, winning by quaint elegance, and material selection is extremely important. Generally, artificial seedling propagation is less common, while collecting old stumps from mountains and fields is more common. Once potted, they become fine works, hence the saying, "Originally a thing of the mountains and fields, today fragrant on the desk."
(3) Foliage Wood
Japanese maple
Ginkgo
Bamboo
Foliage wood bonsai uses tree species with beautiful tree shapes, densely growing branches and leaves, strange leaf shapes, and rich and varied leaf colors as materials, highlighting the leaf-viewing effect. Commonly used materials include red maple, Japanese maple, trident maple, winged euonymus, Japanese holly, mahonia, ginkgo, Chinese holly, sago palm, palm bamboo, and bamboo, among others. This type of bonsai is not only for viewing leaves but also has other ornamental effects. However, its main scenery is bright and pleasing leaf colors and elegant, novel, and strange leaf shapes. Foliage wood bonsai includes evergreen tree types, which remain green in all four seasons and can be viewed year-round. There are also deciduous tree types, which present different colors as the seasons change; although leaves fall in deep winter, the scene of cold-season trees can still be viewed.
(4) Flowering Wood
Plum
Azalea
Crabapple
Camellia
Flowering wood bonsai uses flowering trees or flowers with both beautiful flower color and flower posture, colorful, brilliant and gorgeous, fragrance refreshing, and full of vitality as materials, paired with exquisite pots, and through decorative processing highlights the flower-viewing effect. Its styling should preferably have crooked branches and old trunks, rare and famous varieties, well-spaced branches and leaves, and abundant flowers covering the tree. If materials are obtained by the right method, with flowers in succession throughout the four seasons, all entering the pictorial realm, it is even better. Commonly used materials include winter jasmine, plum blossom, ornamental peach, broom, wintersweet, crabapple, camellia, azalea, serissa, crape myrtle, osmanthus, and gardenia, among other famous flowers and fine plants. Flower bonsai has a unique effect in garden scenery. On festivals, with flowering bonsai as decoration, the beauty is alluring and the fragrance strikes people, making them pleased and delighted, feeling spring throughout the garden.
(5) Fruiting Wood
Firethorn
Apple
Fruiting wood bonsai uses fruit-viewing tree species as materials. Their fruits are pleasing in color; red and purple ones are considered noble, while yellow ones are secondary. Whenever red fruits pile up and golden fruits hang on branches, not only does it add color to the garden scenery, but it also gives people a feeling of abundance. Commonly used materials include firethorn, nandina, golden bell, tiger thorn, goji berry, fruiting pomegranate, oleaster, wild hawthorn, finger citron, kumquat, barberry, and viburnum, among others. In late autumn, when flowers fade and trees shed leaves, in a garden with bleak autumn wind, several pots of fruit-viewing bonsai can be arranged. With red and yellow alternating, the colors attract attention and the posture is graceful, which can break the silence of the garden scene and increase the interest of the living environment.
(6) Vine Wood
Wisteria
Honeysuckle
Vine wood bonsai uses climbing trees or vine plants as base trees, pots and shapes them, and highlights their curled stems and drooping branches and leaves. It has both bright flowers and fruit, graceful posture and charm, and a distinctive style. Commonly used materials include wisteria, ivy, star jasmine, honeysuckle, wintercreeper, Chinese trumpet creeper, grape, and Boston ivy, among other woody vine plants. This type of bonsai is characterized by tangled or hanging vine stems, so it is mostly displayed on deep pots and tall stands, or hung on walls with long drooping trails, or attached to rocks and coiled around them, possessing a graceful charm and an ancient appearance.
(7) Herbaceous Flowers
Phalaenopsis
Cymbidium
Bromeliad
Anthurium
The material selection for herbaceous flower bonsai is different both from tree bonsai, which mainly focuses on viewing tree posture, and from ordinary potted flowers. Woody flowering plants mainly viewed for their flowers can be used, such as crabapple, Chinese rose, azalea, camellia, and winter jasmine; herbaceous flowers such as orchids, chrysanthemums, and narcissus can also be used. Small accessories such as rocks, shepherd boys, beauties, and old men can be arranged in the pot to express the overall decorative beauty of herbaceous flower bonsai and the poetic and pictorial meaning of certain themes.
5. Forms of Tree Stump Bonsai
Tree stump bonsai can be divided intoregular type and natural typetwo categories. From the development trend, the natural type is dominant. Natural-type styling often follows the natural posture of the tree stump material, adapting measures to circumstances and guiding according to the situation, and the composition is relatively flexible. Simulating large trees growing naturally, it is shaped freely, with changeable forms and countless postures. There are different forms, but no fixed format. Its forms can be roughly summarized as12 types：
(1) Upright Style
Single-Trunk Upright Style
Single-Trunk Upright Style
Single-Trunk Upright Style
Single-Trunk Upright Style
Double-Trunk Upright Style
Three-Trunk Upright Style
The plant grows upward, towering and erect.The main trunk is upright, neither bent nor curved, with branches growing out horizontally, majestic and tall, with distinct layers, standing toweringly, possessing the posture of ancient trees reaching the sky in nature. Upright-trunk bonsai is further divided into single-trunk, double-trunk, or multi-trunk forms. It is most common in the Lingnan school of Chinese bonsai. Commonly used tree species include five-needle pine, golden larch, dawn redwood, zelkova, hackberry, Chinese elm, and orange jessamine, among others.
(2) Slanting Style
Slanting Style
The main trunk of the tree slants to one side, with branches spreading flat beyond the pot, and the main branch extending in the opposite direction from the trunk. The tree shape has both dynamic momentum and balance, with crooked branches extending horizontally and an elegant, unrestrained posture like an old tree in the wild. Commonly used tree species include Buddhist pine, Chinese elm, Japanese bush cherry, wintersweet, twisted-flower crabapple, and golden bell, among others.
(3) Lying-Trunk Form
Lying-Trunk Style
The tree lies horizontally on the pot surface, like the momentum of being struck by lightning or blown down by wind. Although the trunk lies horizontally, the crown rises and extends. The main trunk of the tree lies horizontally on the pot surface, while the crown branches rise proudly. The tree posture is aged and quaint, with the momentum of a crooked dragon walking backward, full of wild charm. For example, the lying dragon pine growing horizontally on Wolong Peak in Huangshan has a trunk in a lying posture, with the top branches raising their heads, quite like a dark dragon riding the waves, and is one of the natural wonders of strange pines. Commonly used tree species for the lying-trunk style include Japanese bush cherry, orange jessamine, Chinese elm, shore juniper, and goji berry, among others.
(4) Curved-Trunk Form
Curved-Trunk Style
The trunk coils upward, mostly seen in classical traditional forms. The main trunk of the treecoils upward, like the shape of a swimming dragon, with branches and leaves staggered front and back, left and right, and distinct layers. Curved trunks can be natural type or regular type. This form is commonly seen in Hui school, Sichuan school, and Yangzhou school bonsai, such as swimming dragon plum and square-bend style, which are curved-trunk artificial styles. Commonly used tree species include plum blossom, Chinese juniper, wisteria, crape myrtle, true juniper, and Buddhist pine, among others.
(5) Waterside Style
Waterside Style
The trunk extends horizontally and elegantly beyond the pot, but does not hang down inverted, just like a tree by the water. It is similar to the slanting style, but the main trunk slants at a greater angle, often close to lying horizontally, yet without a main branch extending in the opposite direction. Commonly used tree species include Japanese bush cherry, black pine, tamarisk, boxwood, and Buddhist pine, among others.
(6) Cascade Style
Full Cascade
Full Cascade
Full Cascade
Full Cascade
Semi-Cascade
Full Cascade
The stem of the plant hangs outward, facing danger and peril, resembling an ancient pine on a green cliff. If the stem hangs no lower than the bottom of the pot, it is called semi-cascade; if it hangs below the bottom of the pot, it is called full cascade.
(7) Raised-Root Style
Raised-Root Style
The roots of the tree are coiled and exposed outside the pot soil, like eagle claws hanging high, or like a coiled dragon, quaint and strange. This form must be formed by gradually raising the root system to the soil surface when repotting. Commonly used tree species include banyan, Chinese elm, trident maple, Japanese bush cherry, boxwood, and serissa, among others.
(8) Connected-root style
Connected-root style
Two or more trunks,with thick roots exposed and connected, the stems of varying heights, arranged in a pleasing, uneven pattern. In Guangdong it is called "conjoined trees". This form mostly uses tree species whose roots readily sprout adventitious buds, creating the scene of multiple trees with interconnected roots in the wild. Commonly used species include Fujian tea (Carmona retusa), snowbush (Serissa japonica), Chinese plum yew (Sageretia thea), yellow vitex (Vitex negundo), firethorn (Pyracantha), and red nanmu (Syzygium buxifolium). The connected-root style should be regarded as a type of exposed-root style.
(9) Forest style
Forest style
Three, five or more specimens planted together, creating the charm of mountain forests. Also called "group planting style". This form can express the scene of trees growing in clumps of three or five in nature, or simulate the forest scenery of sparse woods, dense forests, and cold-weather forests in the mountains. The trees may be straight or curved, upright or slanting, full of variation. Commonly used species include golden larch (Pseudolarix amabilis), dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), zelkova (Zelkova serrata), red maple (Acer palmatum), tiger thorn (Damnacanthus indicus), snowbush (Serissa japonica), and Fujian tea (Carmona retusa).
(10) Withered-trunk style (also called withered-peak style)
Withered-trunk style
The main trunk of the tree has taken on the appearance of dead wood, the bark is mottled, exposing perforated and hollowed-out xylem, with bare roots like claws, presenting the ancient, rustic posture of a withered peak. Yet part of the bark and branches still retain vitality, putting out green branches and leaves,embodying the artistic conception of "dead wood meeting spring", with a distinctive character. Some use an old tree stump as a withered peak, on which new branches and leaves sprout like a small tree atop a peak; this is also called a "tree on rock" and is full of natural wild charm. Commonly used species include yellow vitex (Vitex negundo), Chinese elm (Ulmus parvifolia), Chinese juniper (Juniperus chinensis), crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica), Chinese plum yew (Sageretia thea), and ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba).
(11) Rock-attached style
Rock-attached style
Anypotted tree growing attached to rockcan be called a rock-attached bonsai, but the tree must always be the main subject. The tree trunk may take various forms such as slanting trunk, curved trunk, and straight trunk.
(12) Weeping-branch style
Weeping-branch style
The branches of the tree hang down profusely, just like the posture of a weeping willow. For tree species with soft branches, through artificial processing, all branches droop around the rim of the pot. It expresses the scene of weeping-branch trees swaying in the wind in nature, elegant and graceful. In this form the trunk is mostly slanting or curved. Commonly used species include winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum), tamarisk (Tamarix chinensis), Caragana (Caragana sinica), goji (Lycium chinense), wisteria (Wisteria sinensis), and weeping plum (Prunus mume var. pendula).
The forms of tree-stump bonsai are not limited to these twelve; these classification methods only focus on one particular aspect, and if observed carefully, some works can be assigned to multiple forms.