What are the characteristics of miniature bonsai, and which plants are suitable for growing them?

Miniature bonsai is also called palm bonsai, named so because the pot does not exceed the size of a palm. The height is generally less than 10 cm, making it an extremely small bonsai. Because of its small size and ease of display and arrangement, it is deeply welcomed by people at home and abroad. At present, the style of miniature bonsai has become popular throughout the world. Miniature bonsai already existed in ancient China. In 1972, on the corridor mural of the tomb of Li Xian, Crown Prince Zhanghuai of the Tang Dynasty (son of Wu Zetian), unearthed at Qianling in Shaanxi, there are two palace ladies holding potted plants. This is the prototype of ancient Chinese palm potted plants, which shows that miniature bonsai had already appeared in China during the Tang Dynasty, but it did not develop well, and records are also very few. The rise of modern miniature bonsai in China was in Shanghai, beginning in the early 1960s. At the first National Bonsai @#@120@#@ held in Beijing in 1979, it played a huge role in promoting the development of miniature bonsai. By 1985, at the National Bonsai Evaluation and Exhibition held in Shanghai, almost all participating provinces and cities exhibited miniature bonsai. At this point, miniature bonsai had become a style recognized by China's bonsai circles. In recent years, ultra-miniature bonsai has appeared in some places. The pot diameter of this kind of bonsai is below 5 cm, and it can be placed on a finger, so it is also called finger bonsai.

Although miniature bonsai is very small in size, it can also fully reflect the beauty of bonsai art, but it is difficult to express the poetic and picturesque inner meaning of bonsai.

Generally speaking, miniature bonsai is mainly plant bonsai, supplemented by landscape bonsai. Because miniature bonsai is limited by the pot body, the plant materials selected should be plants with small leaves, thick trunks and fine branches, easy to train into short trunks and twisted postures, slow-growing, strongly adaptable, with strong sprouting ability and shade-tolerant varieties. Commonly used plants include five-needle pine, black pine, lacebark pine, Buddhist pine, azalea, camellia, ginkgo, hawthorn, silverberry, Japanese serissa, crabapple, crape myrtle, gardenia, elm-leaf plum, boxwood, tiger thorn, winter jasmine, heavenly bamboo, red maple, tamarisk, plum pine, small sago palm, fruiting pomegranate, ivy, Chinese trumpet creeper, small fernleaf bamboo, and so on.