Detailed Guide to Pruning Diospyros cathayensis Bonsai

  Diospyros cathayensis is a typical fruit-appreciation bonsai. Because its fruits are golden yellow or light orange-yellow, looking like little golden round beads, it gets its name, and it is a rather lovely choice of material for bonsai artistic styling.

  Diospyros cathayensis blooms in late April and its fruits ripen in mid-October. For ornamental purposes, the fruits must be removed after the Spring Festival (they can be used for breeding and propagation), otherwise it will affect flowering and fruiting that year.

  Pruning and shaping fruit-bearing tree-stump bonsai requires more gradual, step-by-step work than pruning and shaping foliage bonsai; you cannot rush to get it right in one go. If you lean too much toward beautiful form and prune away too many fruit-bearing mother branches, it will affect that year's fruiting results. Therefore, both aspects must be taken into account.

  During the peak growing season, regularly remove dense, overlapping, wrongly positioned and leggy shoots and buds, so as to concentrate nutrients into developing strong branches. Strong branches should be pinched promptly to encourage a second flush of shoots, so as to develop the tree form and fruit-bearing mother branches. The number of fruit-bearing mother branches to keep should be determined by the shape of the potted tree and the strength of its growth direction. Pruning should be carried out once every winter. Cut away weak branches, diseased and pest-infested branches, inner-canopy branches, crossing branches and overlapping branches, which helps ventilation and light penetration, promotes healthy growth, and achieves abundant flowers and fruit.