Tips and Techniques:Timing Is Everything, Sometimes

摘要

I am often asked how to bring about a certain result in bonsai training. The question often comes from those new to bonsai but also with surprising frequency from those who have been doing bonsai for many years. There are many wonderful sources of specific technique information available to us all. Detailed text, pictures, and videos show how tc wire, transplant, prune, and more. The "how to do it" information is not always useful. There is more to the story.One of the great attractions of bonsai is that many plant species can be used for the practice of the art. This makes bonsai multidimensional, much more interesting, and vastly more complex than dealing with a single species. Each species has characteristics determined by its DNA. In fact, each seedling within a species will have some differences in characteristics determined by variation of DNA among seedlings. Some of the variations such as leaf shape areobvious. Other variations such as cold hardiness or ease of propagation are difficult to easily determine.