What makes a firethorn bonsai beautiful? Two appreciations let you savor it
Like red clouds ablaze, flaming as fire
When you see a stretch of fiery red clouds before your eyes, you will feel especially delighted, because it gives people a feeling of warmth, boldness, auspiciousness and harmony. People rush to see the red leaves of autumn mountains precisely to seek this feeling. The Tang dynasty poet Du Mu's "I stop the carriage, loving the maple grove at dusk; frost-bitten leaves are redder than February flowers" describes how the author, attracted by the red leaves covering the mountain, was unwilling to leave for a long time. Mao Zedong wrote the fine line "See a thousand mountains all red, layer upon layer of forest dyed through," expressing the surging pride in the author's heart. This firethorn group-forest bonsai strives to create just such an artistic conception, to strike a chord in people.
Firethorn, also known as torch fruit and flame tree, is an evergreen shrub or small tree, easily dwarfed and tolerant of pruning, with abundant flowers and dense fruit. The fruit is roughly spherical and comes in red and yellow; for ornamental purposes the red-fruited kind is better. Introduced some years ago into Lingnan bonsai creation, it achieved fairly good results: on a mature stump the branches bear clusters of red fruit that hang on for a long time and are very pleasing to look at, so it became popular in bonsai circles for a time.
Firethorn can be made into Lingnan bonsai in various forms. This firethorn bonsai appears in the form of a group forest. The author selected more than twenty upright firethorn stumps of differing thickness and height, planted them together in a rectangular marble shallow tray, divided into two groups, primary and secondary. The soil surface of the two groups is piled into raised slopes, with a gap left in the middle and the soil surface slightly lower, like a dense forest on a wild mountain wasteland. What makes the bonsai valuable is that the branch tips of every tree are covered with bright red fruit, layer upon layer, vividly red and flourishing. Seen close up it is a forest full of fruit; seen from afar it is a sheet of fire, very spectacular and eye-catching! Facing a whole forest of fire-like fruit, one cannot help but feel open-hearted, passionate and full of pride. Indeed: green trees form a forest, branches full of fruit; red clouds fill the sky, seeming to be fire. Not contending with the four seasons for spring light, only leaving hope sown in the heart.