Newsletter

July 2018 Ross Clark, editor

Articles in this newsletter are the intellectual property of the authors. If information or ideas are excerpted, paraphrased or duplicated

in any way, proper credit must be given to the originator. Authors of articles published here also are expected to respect intellectual

property rights. The American Bonsai Society is not responsible or liable for opinions expressed by contributors to this newsletter.

Photos are by the editor unless otherwise indicated.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Special Announcement; other announcements 2-3 Bonsai Exhibits and Shows 4 How Hot Should Bonsai Roots Get? (Ross Clark) 5-7 A Bonsai Calendar? No Can Do “ 8 What is a Pine Candle, Really? “ 8 Cons and Pros of Bonsai Lists “ 9 Special Educational Opportunities 10

This newsletter is published by the American Bonsai Society as a service to the bonsai community.

From the Editor Here we are, a few days past the summer solstice. Days have stopped lengthening; in fact, they’ve already begun to shorten a little bit. That trend will accelerate later in the summer. Your plants are tuned in. Have you noticed that they already have fully formed winter buds? If you haven’t done so, it’s now time to reduce the percentage of nitrogen in your fertilizer to half or less the percentage of phosphorus and potassium. That will “encourage” your plants to stay on the correct path to prepare for winter. If you plan to decandle or shorten pine twigs, now is (or shortly before now!) the time to do it if you want to encourage new growth with shorter needles on two– and three-needle pines. It’s also time to shorten by a third to a half the candles of pines in the white pine group (4-5-needles per bundle). (See p. 7) One of the most important results of this technique is to produce more compact growth. If you plan to show a tree in a late summer or fall bonsai show, your final touches should be well underway. And please, even if you don’t show a tree anywhere, at least go to a show or two. If you look carefully at the trees, you will learn a lot that could improve your technique. At least, I always do . . . learn, that is; not necessarily improve. For Your Enjoyment of Bonsai, Wherever You Are, Ross

This is a recent view of some bonsai at Kew Gardens,

England, sent to me recently by Ed Stanton, who

photographed them.

A SAD SITUATION Last weekend, to the shock and dismay of nearly all in the bonsai community, Juan Andrade an-nounced via Facebook that he and his fiancée had returned to Costa Rica to live, because they felt increasingly slandered by some referring to them as ‘Illegals” (they are not) and maliciously dispar-aging Juan’s talents. This apparently had been occurring for over a year, and was causing them both to feel not only unwelcome here in the U.S., but also to suffer a personal loss of dignity at constantly having to answer such allegations. Anyone who has spent even five minutes in the company of Juan can attest to his intelligence, bon-sai skills, kindness and humility. He is top notch both as a person and as a bonsai professional. The outpouring of support via social media is a testament to his skills and personality. And yet the dam-age is done. We at ABS are horrified that such a situation has come to pass. Bonsai is a hobby developed by for-eigners, taught to us by foreigners, which has now become a global art form. It is diametrically op-posed to the ultimate pursuit of such an art to in any way speak or behave in an exclusionary man-ner. Saboro Kato, venerable Japanese bonsai master and founder of the World Bonsai Friendship Federation, famously stated, “Bonsai No Kokoro” - roughly translatable as bonsai created from deep in your heart and from veneration of nature has no ego. Malicious, slanderous, xenophobic speech or behavior has no place in American Bonsai. We at ABS will not tolerate it in our organization, and we implore all in our community to use bonsai, this greatest of art forms, as a vehicle for peace and inclusion. Karen Harkaway, outgoing ABS President Mark Fields, incoming ABS President

Special Announcement

The founding of the World Bonsai Friendship Association was inspired by the concept formulated by Saburo Kato of World

Peace Through Bonsai. —ed.

Announcements

We’d like you to join us! Why not benefit by learning more about bonsai from reliable sources and mak-

ing new bonsai friends? If you’re not an ABS member, please consider supporting bonsai and receiving bene-fits by becoming an ABS member. An annual single or club membership is $45 (USA); $65 (Canada) Other membership options and details are at this link.

RESULTS OF ABS ELECTION

The ABS election cycle ends June 30. Accordingly, we have new officers going forward from this point. Unless otherwise noted, these officers were elected for full terms which begin July 1, 2018. ABS current officers are: President Mark Fields Vice President Karen Harkaway Secretary Pauline Muth Treasurer George Buehler (continuing) New ABS Board of Directors members are: Gary Andes Kingsport, TN Barbara Bogan Lynnville, IN Ross Clark Richmond KY (appointed Jan. 2018) Joe Graviss Versailles, KY The President serves a two-year term which may be extended for two additional years, if desired. Board members serve a three-year term which may be extended for three additional years, if desired.

The 2019 ABS Convention, “Bonsai on the Bayou” is scheduled for April 11-14 in Houston, TX, at

the Houston Marriott Westchase. ABS partners for the convention are the Houston Bonsai Society and the Lone Star Bonsai Federation. Featured guest artists will be Boon Manakitivipart, Ryan Neil and Enrique Castaño de la Serna. Please save the dates and join us! The Editor is seeking photos of bonsai or unusual trees in habitat for the newsletter. They will be used to fill odd spaces in the newsletter, to help illustrate articles, or just for eye candy. If you send photos, please add the name of the photographer if the photographer desires credit. In no case will a photograph be associated with the name of any bon-sai owner. Please send photos as separate files or attachments, so the electronically semi-literate editor can handle them easier. Thanks. Please, please consider writing an article for this newsletter. There’s a lot of valuable information out there about expe-riences, insights and techniques that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle and which could help to prevent other bon-sai folks from re-inventing the wheel. If you have things like that sequestered in your head, let them out — let’s have it. THANKS!

Deadline for submission of material for the August 2018 newsletter is Friday, July 20. Please send all news-letter material to ross.clark@eku.edu. Thanks!

The list below aspires to include all bonsai events in North America significant enough to have a web link. A web link, of course, is perhaps the predominant way these days for most people to obtain additional infor-mation. If your bonsai event isn’t on this list and you think it should be, send me the web link and I’ll do the

rest. I will maintain events on the following list until the show dates pass. THANKS for helping with this! –ed.

LIST OF BONSAI CONVENTIONS, EXHIBITS AND SHOWS — new items have been added This is a rolling list. Events are listed by date. Additional events will be posted here as details become availa-ble. If details change, please notify the editor. Be sure to double-check the details before going to a show. If your show is not included on this list and has a web link, PLEASE send me the link and I will do the rest. —ed. For more information, click on the BLUE links. National Bonsai and Penjing Museum, Washington, DC. Viewing stone exhibit through September 30 Nashville Bonsai Society Exhibit, July 21, Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, Nashville, TN Prairie State Bonsai Society Show, Aug. 4-5, Morton Arboretum Sycamore Room, Lisle, IL Midwest Bonsai Society, 41st Bonsai Exhibition, Aug 17-19, Chicago Botanic Garden, Glencoe, IL U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition, Sept. 8-9, Rochester, NY Northwest Bonsai Rendezvous, Sept. 14-16, Portland, OR Milwaukee Bonsai Society, 48th Annual Bonsai Exhibit, Oct. 5-8*, Boerner Botanical Gardens in Whitnall Park, Hales Corners, WI (* there are conflicting dates on the web page; flier and text give different dates) Golden State Bonsai Federation Convention, Oct. 24-28, McClellan Conference Center, Sacramento, California The Golden State Bonsai Federation (GSBF) also maintains a list of many bonsai societies in the West. You can follow their activities and find information about their shows by clicking here, and following the links under “Clubs”. Memberships in the GSBF are available. Annual Bonsai Show and Sale: Bonsai Society of Southwest Florida, Nov. 3-4, Berne Davis Botanical Garden, Ft. Myers, FL Winter Silhouette Bonsai Show, Dec. 1-2, North Carolina Research Campus, Kannapolis, NC

2019 American Bonsai Society National Convention, April 11-14, Houston, Texas, at the Marriott Houston Westchase Convention Center. “Bonsai on the Bayou” Hosted by the Houston Bonsai Society and the Lone Star Bonsai Federation. Featured artists will be Boonyarat Manakitivipart, Ryan Neil, and Enrique Castaño de la Serna.

Courtesy of MacroBonsai

How Hot Should Bonsai Roots Get? by Ross Clark

It’s summer, and in many places, it’s HOT again! That brings to mind the perennial conversation that we have about bonsai root systems in containers or pots. How hot should we allow them to get? There are various ways of looking at this subject, but mostly we just scratch our heads and pass around ad-vice that may or may not be based on our experience or what someone else has told us.

One approach is to make statements like Larry Morton has done in his recent book (Modern Bonsai Practice:

501 Principles of Good Bonsai Horticulture, 2016), and I quote: The usual recommendation is to minimize the exposure of tree roots to constant temperatures higher than 1000F. That is

also the temperature at which the process of photosynthesis will start to break down. At 950F root growth slows by as

much as 90 percent. Higher than 107.60, which is 420C, the roots can’t take up water and essential elements and can die.

(p. 83)

Another approach is to estimate soil temperatures in places where trees grow naturally, such as the follow-ing map which gives average soil temperatures (original source probably is the US Dept. of Agriculture).

ments of where we grow our trees are what really matters. Your bonsai growing site is not exactly the same as anyone else’s anywhere. Even though some of the plants we grow as bonsai are special cultivars, they or their direct progenitors were once wild, and natural environments are what shaped their genetic makeup and molded their environmental tolerances. So, to get a better idea of what their root systems might tolerate, doesn’t it make sense that we

should look at soil temperatures where the yamadori (= wild plants that are or once were collected for bonsai) grow? Plants that end up in bonsai pots come from all kinds of habitats, from deserts to the Arctic and the Tropics. But most trees grow in forests of some kind, including savannas and semi-deserts. So, I thought it would be interested to see what kinds of soil temperatures plants are adapted to in nature. So, where can we find information like this? You can look high and low without ever finding it in any bonsai book, or even on a bonsai care sheet for that matter. As far as I’ve been able to tell, no one has ever con-ducted a reasonable experiment on the temperatures of bonsai roots under different conditions. The reason why is simple: It would be extremely expensive and difficult to try to run such experiments.

Neither one of these approaches is very useful for bonsai growers. Aside from its misconcep-tions, Morton’s statement is not at all useful because we are not really interested in soil temperatures that kill roots; we’re interested in the highest temperatures under which roots can remain healthy. General averages like those shown on the map aren’t useful ei-ther, except that they do give us a clue that plants from some places might be adapted to different soil temperatures than plants from other places. And besides, the microenviron-

Hot roots, continued So, I decided to go back to square one . . . and conducted a search of some primary research work that’s been going on with forest soil temperatures, to see what I could find. There’s active research these days into wheth-er forest soil temperatures are rising due to climate warming [they are], and how rising soil temperatures affect various processes and organisms that live in soils. Chemical and biological processes are temperature-dependent, so soil temperatures are usually monitored in many kinds of soil studies. As I said already, I didn’t look everywhere. But I did find some information that’s summarized in the chart be-low. If you’re interested, the links within the chart will take you to the publications that include the data. Most of the results were in Celsius degrees; I’ve converted them to Fahrenheit. Most of the soil temperatures were measured at a depth of 5 cm (= 2 inches), comparable to the root zone in many bonsai containers. Some of the studies were conducted over more than one year, some over many years. TEMPERATURE DATA FROM SOME RECENT STUDIES OF FOREST SOILS

STUDY SITE MIN. WINTER TEMPERATURE (oF) MAX. SUMMER TEMPERATURE (oF) Scots pine forest, Estonia 38 ~70 Mixed forest, northern China 22 68 Mixed forest, Japan 2 74 Mesquite-grassland, southern Arizona 5 low 90s Douglas fir stands (3), Pacific Northwest 32 64 Northern Minnesota Aspen woodland 30 59 Bog 32 59 Northern Vermont: 3 sites, elev. 2200-2400 ft. 37 (avg., not absolute min.) 54-55 (avg.) Central Appalachian mixed forest, Virginia mid-40s (Apr; not annual min.) low 70s (August, near avg. max)

When I compiled the data from these far-flung studies, I was really surprised! Just look at the highest summer temperatures and how little they vary! These data are crystal clear. What they shout at us is that, except for extreme environments like deserts, most tree roots in nature are hardly ever exposed to temperatures higher than the 70s. And a logical corollary of that is, it is reasonable to assume that root systems of most Temperate Zone trees are increasingly stressed as soil temperatures in our bonsai pots climb through the 80s and beyond. The data also indicate that tree roots in higher mountain elevations and at higher latitudes are adapted to sum-mer soil temperatures that go no higher than the 50s and low 60s. If you suspected that, now you have scien-tific data to back up your opinion. (Keep in mind that most soil temperatures were not taken in bare soil. There’s usually natural “mulch” on top of the soil that acts as insulation from air temperatures.) These data certainly do strongly suggest that to keep our trees in good health, we should try not to let soil get too much hotter than it would get under natural conditions. So now, we have a better idea of what those natu-ral temperatures are. As for me, I get nervous whenever soil temperatures in pots reach beyond 80F degrees. And my few little spruces and tamarack receive additional special treatment to help soil remain as cool as pos-sible. I’d like their soil to remain no higher than the 60s, if possible. Very rarely, when the temperature gets ter-ribly out of bounds, I’ve even been known to apply a bit of crushed ice to the soil surface. I hope this short article gives you a more accurate picture of what summer bonsai soil temperatures should be. Now we know what we need to do. How to do it is another issue.

Hot roots, continued

Just for the heck of it, here are the graph-

ic data from the Estonia study (see chart

on previous page). If you’re eaten up

with curiosity, you can see data from the

other studies by clicking on the links in

the chart.

One of Julian Adams’ techniques for keeping root

systems cooler is the use of white pots.

Lighter colored bonsai containers

could help keep higher tempera-

tures within reasonable bounds.

However, their higher thermal

mass will hold heat better than

cheap plastic pots. Also, for esthetic

reasons, very light colored contain-

ers are not suitable for some bonsai

species and compositions.

A Bonsai Care Calendar? No Can Do – Ross Clark When you scan the Web, you find that some folks have compiled calendars of when you should do various things to bonsai through the year. A few people have asked me if I would think of compiling such a calen-dar. The answer is, I would not be so presumptuous. Even a calendar applied to a particular genus, such as pines, is not realistic. All pine species do not respond the same way at the same time to environmental stimuli. Even pines of the same species that originated in different populations (the local provenance) will be genetically unique and will respond differently to the same environmental variables. And that goes for every other species in every other genus. Perhaps an even more valid reason for not doing a precise care calendar is that every year is not the same as any past or future year. And that’s especially the case because the global climate is changing rapidly, and our local weather and climate are varying more from year to year now. And a great deal of evidence sug-gests that we should expect environmental variability to increase much further. Consequently, a general calendar of care for bonsai could actually be a misleading instrument. It is much more realistic to take each season and year as they come, not assuming that what worked last year at a par-ticular time can predict what will happen next year. On the other hand, a Care Sheet for a particular species or variety can be very helpful, if it tells you when to do what, based on the phenology (seasonal behavior) of the species. But those who write Care Sheets should be sensitive to the fact that what works in one part of the country may not work as well in other parts of the country. We should try to fine-tune our horticulture to the exact place where we grow our trees. That takes time, sensitive knowledge of plants, and careful observation.

What is a Pine Candle, Really? — Ross Clark

A pine candle really is a stem that has numerous very short spur shoots. Each bundle of needles is a spur shoot. Spur shoots are common in other Gymnosperms (= non-flowering seed plants), such as larches and ginkgos. They also are common in some groups of Angiosperms (= flowering plants), such as cherries, ap-ples and pears. The internodes on spur shoots are very short.

These little dark

structures are

actually the

scale-like leaves

on the pine can-

dle. Toward the

end of the can-

dles, you can

see that a scale-

like leaf is at the

base of every

spur shoot or

bundle of nee-

dles. As the candles mature and the needles reach their mature

length, the scale-like leaves fall off. According to Rodney

Clemons, when or soon after the scales fall off is the time

when you should shorten the candles of Japanese white

pines.

Cons and Pros of Bonsai Lists — Ross Clark

We are a listing and naming species. Everything (and everyone, for that matter) has to have a name, so we can add it to the context of the wiring of our brain and communicate about whatever it is. We are mighty good at making lists – places we’ve been, people we know, birds we’ve seen, recipes to cook, articles in mu-seums and species to grow as bonsai, are examples. We could even make lists of lists. Bonsai folks have not been negligent, either. Within a couple of days after I became editor of this newsletter, someone had already asked me if I thought we should work up a list of plants to grow as bonsai. So far, I’ve declined. Here’s a thought or two on that subject. I am familiar with the plant lists compiled in the past by BCI and ABS. I have some problems with both of those lists. The most basic problem is that they list practically everything you could grow in a pot – maybe whoever made up each of these lists remembers that they might have seen one in a pot once, so it goes on the list. A related problem is that these lists tend to cover the whole continent, or even the whole world – if only one someone grows it in Barrow, Alaska, or Corpus Christi, by golly, it’s on the list. And a third problem is that different people have varied opinions on what a “real” bonsai is. If a tree is given good care and train-ing, will it have a decent life expectancy to the point where it would be show-worthy? Even with loads of TLC, would it always have a sprawling, ungainly look; would its leaves way too large unless the tree were five feet high; or would growing a particular species just enslave us to fighting a fungus that wouldn’t be a bother if we grew something else? In other words, should “dogs” be on the list? And who decides what to include? So, should we even bother compiling lists of potential bonsai subjects? After all, these lists of ours are in-tended as encouragement for inexperienced people, aren’t they? Sure, I believe we should do it. But is com-piling such intimidating and unrealistic lists the way to go? There are some places where the focus is more realistic. For instance, the Phoenix Bonsai Society (PBS) has put together an amazing list of things that are tried and true as bonsai in Arizona. [click on link] They’ve left out all of the others. And if you check their web site out, you’ll see that each species has extremely detailed and well-documented information. I also noted that PBS is one of the oldest bonsai societies in our part of the world. When it comes to compiling a realistic list, I think they’ve set the bar very high. The Florida people have compiled “Green Sheets” [click on link] , which consist of an extensive collection of pag-es on various tropical bonsai subjects. The Green Sheets come in two separate spiral-bound booklets, or a single booklet that includes both of the segments. They contain a lot of helpful information about growing various tropical species as bonsai. If you know of other noteworthy examples of realistic lists, please let us know about them. Bonsai is chal-lenging enough without everyone having to re-invent the wheel. Maybe the most realistic approach is to do what the Phoenix people have done. Forget the world, or even the whole country. Maybe the most helpful thing would be to compile lists of realistic bonsai species for each region of America. What do you think? If I were doing such lists, I might be tempted to group together on a separate list all those Oriental species that so many people grow. It would be a list for people who are hesitant to try anything new . . .

New Addition to the ABS Book Service:

The Why, What and How of Bonsai Soil by Dr. Brian Heltsley, Ithaca, New York Price $13.95 Bonsai growing media must encourage and support a highly ramified network of fine roots in a very small vol-ume. This booklet takes a novel approach to achieving that goal, by-passing the usual squabbling over “best” recipes. It explains how to quantitatively characterize any soil mix with simple measurements that anyone can perform. Ingredient selection can be consciously tuned for water retention, air flow, density, and cost. Easy to follow instructions empower hobbyists and professionals alike to develop and refine soils that meet their indi-vidual needs.

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