Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: To baby trees.
Bonsai. Banzai.
Banzai. Banzai.
The black pondo podcast.
The Black Pondo Podcast One thing I.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Think I've realized is I have tried to buy some really nice deciduous bonsai trunks.
And I think that part of it is I really appreciate the journey of creating a nice bonsai.
And I think what I've realized is that I'm really excited to develop some really nice trees with you as my teacher, because I think that the potential is absolutely phenomenal.
And I'm just really excited to grow some really nice deciduous bonsai with you. And I think that you're. The technique that you've been teaching me has been just ridiculous.
It's, it's been incredibly fun and I think I'm. I'm more open to buying really nice trunks as opposed to, like, finished deciduous trees.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: And I'm excited for the, for the journey with you, and it's going to be cool.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you.
Yeah, it's great developing deciduousries. I mean, I have a real good time developing them.
Yeah. Once you kind of know the steps and you kind of get a basic idea of the timeframe and growing the tree. Well, yeah, at first it always seems slow, and then it starts kind of picking up the pace and, you know, before you know it, a good amount of time has passed and you see, you know, old pictures versus new pictures and you're like, wow, it's, it's coming together.
Which is always a little tricky to, to sell people on. Right. Just, just the concept of developing bonsai takes so long that a lot of people do have to kind of trust you and what you tell them because the result is not instant at all.
It's. It's not even ins. It's not even quick, like within a five year period a lot of times. Right. Whereas other trees, you might get more result in a five year period. Right. A lot of, a lot of junipers, if the branches are usable, you can get some results fairly quickly. If they're not usable, then maybe not so quickly. Right.
But deciduous trees, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, it can be.
Yeah, it's very rewarding. But it also does kind of require you to kind of have faith in the process.
And again, it really does test your patience. Right.
But I think you've already seen what can happen. Right. You're experienced enough that you know this is the process and then you're ready to go. Right.
I'm referencing more like newer people who are, who I work with for the first time and you know, telling them about this process now it does help having material to show people. Right. Oh, this is what it looked like before and this is what we did and so forth. That's a little bit more helpful. But sometimes we don't always have that and.
Yeah, there's a lot of trust in. Yeah, I guess that's all I can say.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: Yes, well.
[00:03:44] Speaker A: But very rewarding once you see it actually happen. It's. It's pretty cool.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I enjoy, I heard Andrew Robson say he uses the analogy that building deciduous bonsai is like putting money in your 401k.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: It's maybe like not and that. Not trying to speak for Andrew but he basically something along the lines of like, you know, it's not like all that flashy and, and like a get rich quick scheme. But the way I think about it at least is like it's gonna make you money. It's just like a slow and steady.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It takes a long term investment kind of thing. Yeah, that, that's a great analogy for it.
And technically you can apply that to every tree you work on in bonsai.
Is that every tree you work on, no matter what kind of tree it is. Juniper, Japanese maple, tried to maple, deciduous trees, black pines.
Technically if you treat it all like they were 401ks, the quality of the tree would be significantly better.
I think what skews it on the conifer side, mainly junipers. Because people don't do this with black pines. Right. They tend to do it more on junipers.
It gets a little skewed because we see so called results within five years on a juniper but it's not really any kind of real substance in that kind of design a lot of times.
That's also why you see junipers as demo material all the time. Right. Is because you can manipulate the branches and make something that looks like something but the substance is still not there. So.
So sometimes people will say they're kind of two different kind of trees to work on. What I'm saying is that they're really the same. All the great trees take a long time to develop regardless of what kind of tree they are.
It's just that you can't.
Like deciduous trees will stop you in saying, well this branch is thick. You can't just bend it.
Right. It would just break off.
So you have to grow it. It's just like, okay, I have to bend to your will. I can't bend you. Right. Because you're just right.
But on a Juniper, you can whip it around, you know, good or bad, right. There's good bending and there's bad bending, unnecessary bending to, to yield some kind of a product that is sold as really good when in, in fact it's too young. It's again, there's no substance to it. Right. It's, it seems like you, you're trying to get the reward with no real effort. You know, it seems like there's effort but not real effort.
But I, I do like that analogy. Yeah. You, you got to think of it as, it's, it's a marathon. Yeah. I need to say it's, it's never that, that quick hundred meter dash. If, if you think it is, it's, you're really not developing anything of quality. It's just not going to happen.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: It's not, that's just not how it works, right?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, most definitely. Well, I think the question that I want to ask you, and I think this is just such a complex question and the reason I'm asking is because I think it leads to a lot of good conversation, is essentially if I take a tree to you and it's a tree that someone has developed so a nice. Or who, who knows? Like, it's a, I don't know, anywhere from a, a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 to like a 7 on a 1. A scale of 1 to 10.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: My question is should we start this tree over, start the branches over, or should we keep it as is? Like, how do you decide that?
But I think before maybe we get into that, maybe we talk about what even is a good deciduous bonsai in your mind?
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And I mean, that in itself is a tricky question. Right. You know, what is considered a good deciduous tree or good style deciduous tree?
I mean, a big part of it is going to inevitably come down to. Yeah, what, what we all think a, or, or even what we individually think of as a high quality bonsai because there's so many different styles. You know, you can go the Japanese routes, the Japanese route and, and you know, pick off a lot of things that they like to see in deciduous trees or certain types of deciduous trees and say, okay, that's what I believe in, that's what I like.
So that's what I'm going to do.
But if that's not what you're going for, then, then that's not what you're going for. Right. You don't, you don't want to apply a bunch of Japanese aesthetics if you don't like it, right?
You know, what are the aesthetics that you like? Or what, what is it that you want to see, right?
And then you, you kind of go from there. So generally when I, when I work with people, I tend to. I'm kind of a mix, right? I mean, I like Japanese aesthetics, but I am, I like Western aesthetics too. Right? And those are very broad statements too.
So, so we're all somewhere there, right? I think we all get into bonsai because there's something about, let's just say Japanese aesthetics that we like, maybe parts of it that we like. And that's why how we got into bonsai and, and then now we're doing bonsai, maybe we, we. We preserve elements of that, but then we try to add other types of aesthetics that we like based on our own culture, right?
So, so say you, you bring a tree to me and it's at a certain. Whatever its stage is at.
I mean, a couple of things I'll look at is I try to get an understanding of what is it that you want the tree to look like, what kind of aesthetics that you like. It doesn't have to be what aesthetics I like.
Now I could say, well, you know, I'm focusing on Japanese aesthetics only. And if you don't do it my way, you should probably find somebody else, right? That's not a rejection of your aesthetic. It's just, well, you know, I like doing it this way, and that's what I teach, right. Let's say. And then you want something different. Maybe I'm not, I don't know anything about that. I don't feel qualified to help you with that, whatever the reason is. And then we part ways, right? Usually if you're, if somebody, if my client is trying to come up with something different, I do, I do cater to that and understand and just get an idea what is it that they're trying to do now sometimes it really is that they like Japanese aesthetics. They just don't understand it very well. So they come up with ideas that doesn't fit, fit what they actually like, you know, so there, there's some figuring out of that too, but for the most part, just kind of a big picture answer stuff.
If the tree is, say, semi developed, usually one of the few fact, and I learned this when I was in Japan, actually is a big part of bonsai is age, and age is king.
No matter if the tree is developed in any style that I like or maybe not like as much.
If it's this, if it's developed in a certain style and it's been that way for a very long time. I will tend to continue going with it and then finishing that project instead of restarting it.
Unless you just say, you know what, I want to change it, then I'll be okay, then we'll change it, of course.
But I do tend to say, okay, because this branch is 50 years old.
You know, when trees get to a certain age or when branches get to a certain age, they have a characteristic that shows that age that is not easily replaceable, right? You can maybe make a branch look older, but it's hard to make a branch look physically 50 years old or 100 years old or 200 years old. It's hard.
It's not just simple manipulate. Oh, I've been the branch down now that doesn't quite. It feels older. But it's not like you just made it 300 years older either, right? There's a certain look that these old branches really have.
And so at that point you start saying, yeah, we have these guidelines for how to develop a certain type of bonsai.
We have certain aesthetics that we like. But you know what, this tree or this branch is so old, it's just not practical to do that. You know, there's something more to it than just a bunch of technique now.
It's just kind of like we just gotta roll with it at this point.
There's this, it's, it's, it almost becomes a, you know, how dare we think we're so superior to something that's so old that we just manipulated, right? It's like, okay, let's have a little respect, right?
And it is what it is at this point. Now, what is the, where's that cutoff? That's the question I always ask myself, right? Well, if it's a 20 year old branch. But then we're kind of like, well, it's a perspective thing too, right? Some people will be like, well, 20 years old, that's really old. Yeah. To a 20 year old it's like, okay, that's great, right? It seems like, yeah, it's my whole lifetime, right? But to a 60 year old, you're like, you're just some young punk, you know, let's chop this branch out. We can grow another 20 year old branch, no problem, right? I'm experienced, I've been around, right? So it's so you, you get a branch that's 20 years old and you say, well, okay, we can replace it. It's young, relatively young. But if it's a branch that's a hundred Years old, you're kind of like, well that's not that easy. It's like the hundredth cocoa food. Yeah. Yeah. Well it's, it's. That doesn't come around very often. Right. 20 years comes around five times. Right. 100 years old once.
So, so that is a big factor for me is that if, if it does show a lot of really a lot of age into it, then I'll try to go with it. Okay. How do we come up with a style that highlights maybe what we might consider not ideal?
It does require you to then. Yeah. Kind of be.
Look at it a little different generally I would say. Yeah. If the branches are just kind of young, we're not really lose anything by starting. We can only gain.
Then yeah, let's, let's go ahead and restart. I mean but, but I really do try to get an idea of. Okay. What, what the client likes, wants. Now if it was my tree, then I'll just think, okay, what is it that I want to see in this tree?
Is there anything about this tree that is very unique that I shouldn't overlook? And most of the time that's attached to age.
Do I need to come up with a style that caters to that a little bit more instead of me just imposing my will on some young tree?
Some young tree. Okay. I, we, we tend to do that.
It's not a big loss for anybody really. Even for the tree. Right. It's. I'll grow a new branch, no problem. I'm young.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: I do this for a living. Right. You know, an old branch is like, you know, it took a while, it took a long time. We don't just do this every day. Yeah.
So. Yeah. Yeah. And, and so that's why when I was saying earlier about ages is an important factor for me looking in the tree. That, that's, that would be one of the first things I look at sometimes. You know, are there cases where yeah, the old branch just has to go, it just doesn't work for anything.
Sure. That happens.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:07] Speaker A: But I try not to jump to that. Right. That's, that's too much of a loss too quickly to just chop off a hundred year old branch.
Now having said that, if it's a style that we come up with that caters to this really old branch and you just have to kind of see the beauty in that.
If it's a style that maybe we just don't like, maybe it's a tree that you then you decide, okay, it's not a tree for you.
Instead of Trying to hack it up. Right. And force some kind of new style on it.
But it does raise an interesting question on what? Yeah. Where is that number? Right.
It's like Is it 50 years old? Is it 40?
It's going to be different for each type of tree. Right. It's might be easier if it's a black pine. Where. Well, this 80 year old branch has 80 year old bark. Yeah. Well, maybe we shouldn't chop it off. Right.
But if it's a five year old branch, ten year old branch, no bark. Okay.
We can maybe. All right. It's not that old.
And then now you're okay changing it a bunch.
Yeah, yeah. Tricky question. I would say. H has a big part of it.
What other things would be a big part? Yeah, maybe Time frame.
Yeah. Just like thinking about potential of your trees or collection. How long will it take if we decide to chop all the branches out? Is it realistic?
Is this something you want to see through in your lifetime?
If not, then we can go a certain route. If you want to see it through in your lifetime, then it might not be worth it. Now someone has to be able to tell you or you have enough experience to know that, oh, this is a 20 year project or is it a 5 year project or is it a 80 year project? Right. Yeah.
I don't think any of us are thinking like, okay, I'll restart the branches and I'll somehow develop a deciduous tree that can rival deciduous trees that are in Kokofu in Japan because those are multi generational.
But we are realistic that. Okay, well If I put 20, 25 years into this tree, it'll look pretty damn decent and then hopefully the next person will keep working it and it does then become like those koko food trees that took three generations to make. Right. This is just a time thing. Right. Someone just kept carrying it on. We just don't have that time frame yet.
We will at some point. It's only a matter of time.
We just not, not there yet. But we can at least be satisfied that, you know, we, in the 20, 25 years or however long we decide to spend on the tree, we, we played that part. We were that first generation. Hopefully the second generation then does it and so forth and, and it will be matched really at some point.
Yeah.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: So fantastic. So one of the main takeaways that I'm getting here is age is very important and sometimes with great age we're going to get some quirky, interesting, different things going on.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Which might not fit the guidelines, but we're Going to accept it because of the age.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like this little asterisk, right? It's like. Yes, but got it.
Yeah. And I often tell my clients that.
Yeah, age can forgive a lot on a bonsai.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: That makes sense.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Right, perfect.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: So let's, let's put age aside for a second.
What other things are you looking for in high quality deciduous? Like, let's start at, at the, at the basics. Actually.
I'll just give you one.
Why don't we talk about taper?
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: So for me, taper is very important in deciduous. Maybe, you know, with. And, and, and I may put an asterisk by great age.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: However, generally speaking, I guess for you, is taper important? And if so, why would taper be important in good deciduous? And what does that look like?
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, a taper is important in the sense that if you're trying to make some miniature version of some big tree or big old tree is that these old trees will have taper.
So it makes sense that your small size tree that's supposed to look old should have some kind of taper that's proportionate to that.
Now, when you get into stylings of naturalistic styles versus a bit more abstract type styling, say kind of like those sumo trunks, which has like really fast taper. And there's nothing naturalistic about it, of course. Right. It's a, it's an abstract version of a, of naturalistic characteristics that we see in, in trees. It's just an extreme version of it.
Uh, and, and it kind of has its own kind of style. Now for, for me, partly, I do like deciduous trees that, say, have really large trunks. It's not, I mean, it can give you a sense of strengths, it can give you a sense of age. Because the tree is so wide. Because trees that are really wide tends to be older, right?
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Usually skinny trees are not the old trees.
That's not always the case. But usually when we see a tree that's really wide, the assumption is that it's probably older.
So again, that age thing pops up.
Also just seeing deciduous trees that have, say, larger trunks or more extreme kind of trunks, it's kind of fun because it's just a little less common.
Right. It's much easier to grow trees that have subtle taper. That's skinny.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard to grow a big fat.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it requires a lot of skill, technique, you know, timing, they don't all work out right. So there's some skill in growing.
I can't even say it's an artistic thing. It's just a technical thing.
It takes a bit more time.
So. And it's. So it's kind of fun because it's a little rarer. You don't see it as often. It's kind of cool to have. You know, we can all go to the nursery and find skinny trident maples or Japanese maples. You can find out all day. Doesn't mean that they're not worth something. But when you have thousands of them, hundreds of thousand, millions of them, they're not that interesting anymore. So we, we tend to gravitate towards things that are different.
Do I have trees that are skinny and there's something about it that I like. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
So sometimes I might default to like the bigger trunks with more extreme taper just because we, it's just not as common.
And so, and, and it does tend to give you this sense of, wow, this tree must just be really old because look how big it is for its height, how wide the trunk is. Even if, even though we go in knowing it's a distorted view of that. Right. This again, there's nothing naturalistic about it. Right. It's kind of a fun thing. I think so.
But having some kind of normal taper, I, I think it is important though. I've seen some really great trees that don't have taper, but the styling tends to be a little different. And it's kind of a one off thing. It's not a common thing.
And sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't work at all.
That's, that's a risk you take when you get into something like that.
And then there are just styles that people tend to like that people gravitate towards. Right. When they look at deciduous trees, they like seeing semi naturalistic characteristics of deciduous trees.
And that's just kind of the style that's more accepted. Right. And that, that happens with every, every tree, really.
You get a ginkgo tree, at least in Japan, they really style it like one way, right? Yeah, it's kind of this flame kind of style. They don't try to make it look like anything else. Whereas other trees, we do make it look and somehow that's accepted. But on ginkgo it's just not.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah. It doesn't seem like preference ginkgo, that's the way that they want to naturally grow.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So it's a very naturalistic thing. Yeah. There are some trunks that are bigger, but not, it's not that ridiculous. Still looks very similar to what A naturalistic one does.
And so for, for those trees, there's not a lot of variations. Right.
But having said that, because there's not a lot of variation is probably why they're not as popular.
Also, like, you see enough of the same kind of style trunks and you're kind of like, okay, they're great, but we've seen so many, it's not that interesting anymore. Right.
Where some of the harder to come by type trunks are staying more interesting and then there's some where, yeah, we've seen those a million times, but we just love it. We love looking at it all day long. It doesn't matter if it's the same for a hundred trees. We like all of them.
Right.
And that's just a human thing. You know what, what causes that? That's, that's a complex question, but it happens.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
What does good taper look like throughout the tree?
[00:25:53] Speaker A: I mean, I, I, I try to show not so much the exact taper change from one branch to the other, but, but a general consistent change of big to small.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: And so, yeah, big to medium to small.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
If say the rate of change on one section to the next, you, you see, say it shrinking by 50%, whatever the number is. Right.
It does make sense to me that you would see that same reduction on the next branches and so forth. Some consistency in that. There's some, there's, there's going to be slight variations. Right. But some relatively close to each other seems to work out.
But does every single branch have to show that? I'd say no.
If you tried to do that, I mean, that's like the impossible task too. Right. You may never develop a tree because you're trying to make every branch look perfect. But I think generally, at least for the trees that I'm working with, I try to showed that generally we're looking at it and we're seeing that. Is it every branch?
Highly unlikely. But is it a good number of the branches? Yes, got it. Right.
So you get the sense that you're seeing this taper change. It did again. It doesn't have to be perfect, for sure. It doesn't have to be perfect. Trying to make it perfect, it. You just never finish your tree.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:22] Speaker A: You'll always be fixing something. Something's not happy, you're not happy with something. Yeah.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: And so generally speaking, closer to the trunk, when we're talking about branches, we want the closest branch, closest section to the trunk to be the thickest and then gradually get thinner and thinner and thinner and finer until you're on the tips, right?
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. If we're, if we're looking for like a number, right.
I would say that a number to go off. Not again, you can't go off.
Exactly.
If it's a squatty tree where the taper is fast, you're every. From the trunk to the main branch to the secondary branches off that or the secondary branches off of the trunk.
You're looking at wherever the branch is coming off of the trunk or wherever the secondary branch is coming off of the primary branch.
If it's fast tapered at about 50% is gives you that fast taper. So like if your trunk. And this doesn't always work out. Right. But again, this is just generalization.
If, if you have a trunk and the branch comes out, it's like a 50% reduction each time that tapers very fast.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Right.
But that only works for certain styles.
If you want something a little bit softer, that reduction tends to be more like 25, 30%.
So it's a little longer and a slower reduction. So it's a little softer feeling.
So you can potentially use that as a semi. Guideline to kind of give you at least a start on kind of just trying things out. Okay. At least I have a number I can go with. And let's see where we can go with this. Right. If, if people are looking for that number.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Okay. So somewhere between that 25 to 50%, once you get past 50%, you.
The, the branch off of the main branch will start looking like a secondary trunk now. And so it gets a little bit beyond. It's. It might be too crazy or it just looks different. This is, is not a taper thing anymore.
So, so yeah, if we were to assign a number, you can maybe assign those numbers to kind of get you started. But you'll get, you'll get a sense of what is it you like, what kind of style you like. And you might find that. Okay, this is my number based on this style that I tend to like softer or more aggressive taper change.
Something that, that someone told me years ago about thinking about taper is that if you have a, if you, if you're just starting with the trunk, if your trunk currently, when you start off with this, not just as bonsai, right. Not if you're growing and all that stuff, there's a certain amount of taper that starts at the base.
If there's no taper at the base, then the tree is not tapery.
Right. If you see at the base it starts to taper Then you kind of. You can kind of see a line.
And this helps people when they're trying to figure out, well, how fast should the taper be, how tall, which. Which will then change. Well, how tall the tree ends up being is that if you have a trunk that's a certain width and there's some taper in there right at the base. And I know. I'm illustrating this with my hand. I know people out there can't see the. But say, wherever it starts from the ground level, you're touching the trunk with your hand, and there's a certain amount of taper. Your hands are kind of angled in.
If you use that as your guide, and you just follow that up, right. You just draw a line from that starting taper. Wherever that line intersects, that kind of tells you where your trunk kind of ends. Doesn't mean that's exactly where the height of your tree is. But if you want consistent taper, say it's here.
Once it crosses, okay. And you can build the top on top, but that's about where the height of your tree is if you have consistent taper. And you can do that with the branches too, in a way.
That's why if your trunk has no taper, then it never intersects. Right. And you're like, okay, I gotta do something about this.
You know, try to figure out how. Well, how do I get some taper in this thing to get this whole thing started? Now, again, that's. Generally speaking, most trees, most deciduous trees, we do tend to want to see some kind of taper. There are styles where there are no. There is no taper. Sure. It's just a funky style.
Is that acceptable? Absolutely. It's not very common.
And if we're. We're talking again about just generalities, is that for your typical bonsai, taper is important.
But there are some styles where it's not as important. But usually that then comes with the attachment of age.
Yeah, the tree's just too old. It doesn't matter that it doesn't have taper anymore.
So if you have a tree that doesn't have taper and you're really. You're willing to just roll with it and just keep going and kind of roll the dice in a way. Because it could be turn out great or it could turn out really bad. Chances are it'll just turn out bad.
Because the weird trees, it's never like, oh, just because you have a weird idea, turns out great. There's a lot that fail. And then the few occasion where it does.
Does Work out.
So just prepare yourself. Don't expect that it's just going to work out. But sometimes you can have trees that have reverse taper or no taper.
And because of just the overall aesthetic of the tree, the overall styling, the look of the tree just hits these key points that are just likable.
Right. We just like what we see.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
I feel like that's just like you mentioned, though, doesn't work out a lot. And that's more the rare side.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:25] Speaker B: It's more with great age.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's. It becomes a.
[00:33:33] Speaker B: Like, if you were. If. Let's say I want to grow a tree from air layer.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Which I think a lot of the best deciduous seem to come from air layer. You would never say, throw some reverse taper in there or.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Usually we don't go out of our way to say, let's. Let's go for it. Yeah.
It always ends up being something you stumble upon.
Right.
Oh, this tree already has this.
Do we try to change it or do we go with it? Yeah, yeah, That's a very good point. I don't. I don't think anybody ever looked at a tree that had reverse tape and said, yeah, let's go for it. Yeah. You know. Or no, I'm sorry. As in, let's grow reverse taper and let's make something different.
[00:34:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Most people don't do that. And I. I think the. The trees I'm referring to that say, have reverse taper that are really important trees. And in this one case, I think it's a very old red pine.
The. It does have reverse taper, but the tree is so old and the bark is so good. Yeah. It's so thick that we're like, are we really gonna let taper kind of stop us from appreciating this old thing? Yeah. Okay. This is beyond what we're normally doing now, but that's the exception for this one tree.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:46] Speaker A: It's not the norm either, so.
So you probably don't want your entire collection. Just hoping that you'd get something like that. Usually people tend to. That you tend to stumble on that. It's.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: That's a good point.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: For sure.
So let's talk about kind of common, maybe pitfalls in the United States that you see a lot when it comes to tapers.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: I.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: And I guess just a couple, maybe, that I feel like I see are one not having really fine branching on the ends of the silhouette.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: I feel like a lot of times people have really Thick, coarse branches.
And maybe they don't even know that.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Hey.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Oh, well, when you look at deciduous trees in the native environment, often there's really fine branches branching on a nice mature tree, and at the tips, it's all super fine.
And I feel like we don't see that a lot with American deciduous bonsai.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, part of it is just a technical thing, right? Are we working the tree in a way to develop those trees?
Sometimes it's a misunderstanding of, you know, how. How dense a tree should or can be.
Because I, I do know that some people see a certain amount of branches and they'll say, oh, that's very dense.
And then somebody else looks at it and say, well, that's not actually dense enough.
So what defines as dense enough or dense? Right.
I guess it, it really comes down to what someone ended up telling you was dense.
Right.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: I think that's another common pitfall in the US like, not dense enough.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: Yeah. What. What is considered dense enough? Yeah, yeah. Most of the time when I'm trying to create something that has a lot of density to it in the development process, sometimes it's. It's counterintuitive too, because in the early development, say, when the tree is not full size or, and I'm developing a certain amount of density, it seems excessive.
And it is true at the current state, when it's in development, it is excessive, but that's for technical reasons. It's not because we actually want the tree to look like that, because we know that when we're developing deciduous trees, branches come and go. Right. Some branches make it even.
We don't expect all the branches to just make it. On the deciduous, that just doesn't happen.
So in part of the developing of the tree to the final silhouette, in a way, during that process, you do need the tree to have more branches than you really want at the end because, you know, some don't make it. Right. It's just during the process, it looks like it's super crowded for maybe a structure that seems very small. It's not the full size yet, but once you get it to the full size, it's actually not as crowded as you thought.
So again, that just comes down to a technical question.
That's a not question. A technical issue is the understanding of how to develop ramification or at least just knowing that, oh, I can develop this much or even, oh, this is acceptable. I thought it was not, because everybody around me tells me, oh, it's too dense, it's too jammed up. And for Some reason that's a bad thing.
Right. And most of the time people say it's a bad thing because the tree may decline because it's too jammed up without realizing that, well, how full can you make it before that happens? Okay.
And sometimes it's just an environmental thing too. Right. Can we get trees as dense here as in another area? Now the environment might be different enough that we can't or we can.
So that's, that's something to think about. I don't tend to fall back on that, you know, because you can just use that as a cop out. Oh my weather didn't allow me to get as dense. Well, no, it might just be a skill thing. Yeah. So, but, but say you really do, you know, focus on trying to do the best you can and it turns out, yeah, you know, what if it was more humid here in general, things usually grow better and that's why I can get more ramification. And if you're in dry areas, it doesn't happen as well.
Right. I mean we've, we've seen photos of like Ficus that, that are developed in Indonesia. I mean the ramification is crazy. Right. But it, the tree grows 24,7 all year round. It's the perfect weather forest, humid, that they can do that. We try to do that and the tree falls apart. It can't handle the work.
Right. So we can't get it that dense.
And that's just, that's just the fact of life.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: That's just how it is.
So, so yeah, density or understanding what is density. That, that's something that we, we, we're overcoming now, but we can continue.
But we're, it's still early.
Some of the other pitfalls, some of the basic things is water quality. You know, some people try to develop deciduous trees and have bad water and they, they don't quite, not, not that they're bad people or anything. They just don't quite understand how come it's not working out, not knowing that it's just bad water. Right. Something so fundamental like that.
So though that's one of the early main pitfalls that people run into when they try to develop deciduous trees, that their water quality is.
Maybe the second thing is, are the trees getting enough shade? Sometimes people can't provide the shade that the tree may need.
My deciduous trees generally have to go with under 50% shade cloth because it gets to 100 degrees in the summer. No Japanese maple likes that or trident maples in the ground like it. They're fine with that. But in the pond, not so much.
So there's, there's that giving it shade back to technical stuff. Yeah, Just working on them at the right time to get the tree to do what you need it to do. If in, in this case, okay, developing density or more branches in the tree or even things like growing main branches out to get that taper change. Right. Setting it up to have certain sizes, seeing taper change on the tree makes a tree look older. Right. It shows that this branch came first and this branch came next and this branch came after that and so forth.
It's not. If all the branches are the same size, you're like, oh, it's a bush.
Because that's what bushes do.
[00:41:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: They'll kind of come at the same time. It's just this big ball. Right.
So.
So, yeah, I mean, if we're just starting, you know, the easy stuff, let's say, yeah, you know, good water, some shade, start thinking about, okay, what are the techniques that I don't know or what are the techniques that I do know and am I applying it at the correct time? Because the timing is very important.
Then on top of that, trusting the process because it doesn't show itself year after year, it's like in like three year jumps that you see, oh, it's actually working.
Right.
You know, you know, common technical thing is, okay, you wire a branch, don't let the wire bite in and destroy the branch. Right.
Sometimes with deciduous tree, if you're growing the branch out, you put the wire on there and a month later it's biting in.
So you got to take it off. You can't just let it go for six months.
So it's, it's a lot of that. And inevitably it's, you know, once you get past the shade and the, the water quality stuff, it's just all really more technical stuff. And then once you get past the technical stuff of, okay, well, I'm doing everything that I'm supposed to do, you might then say, well, it's an environmental thing. We don't have the same environment that allows us to grow, say, a certain quality of trink or, or we have the better environment. That's a possibility too. Usually general. Generally speaking, if you want to develop bonsai, if you're in more humid areas, you're just going to have more success.
I mean, there's challenges still. You might get more fungus and all that stuff, but trees, generally, most trees grow better if there's humidity. Got it. And in California, for the most, we don't really have like, we don't have warm humidity.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Cold humidity most of the time. Yeah.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Now, so that's some great pitfall falls. I'm curious about pitfalls regarding design. And so I guess one that I see is.
And I'm curious how important this is to you. Going back to taper a bit. I feel like taper should gradually go down.
So. Meaning, like, say, for example, in the trunk, the longest section of taper should be the closest to the surface roots or closest to the soil.
And then after that, it should get slightly shorter and slightly shorter and slightly shorter.
I feel like there's this thing in the US where people have a tapering tree and it gets shorter, but then the apex, they'll. They'll make like three times as long as it should be.
[00:44:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: I don't know what that's about, but that's.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's like a. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a. That's again, that's a technical issue. Right.
So I would say that, yeah. However you want to treat a taper and say the rate of taper.
Yeah. You can break it down to these numbers. Right. And I would say, yeah, you can use that as kind of a guideline. Right. Again, if you have a sense of that, then you're going to be okay. It doesn't have to be perfect because rarely will it ever be perfect. If it happens to be perfect, that's great, that's rare, I'll take it.
But as long as it gives you that sense, then I'd say, okay, that's great. We want to at least have that.
What's happening in, I think in the US in this kind of weird, lopsided taper that you're talking about, or maybe this lack of taper is. Is.
Seems very simple to me.
Right.
Mainly because when I was in Japan, you know, my teacher is like, was he third, third or fourth generation? And they started as tree growers for bonsai. Right.
And I've seen some of the trees they've grown in the ground and all that stuff, root over rocks, all that. And some of the techniques they use to get taper in the tree.
Right. It really does come down to if you ever see a Japanese maple that's imported from Japan and let's say it's of decent quality, something you'll notice is that usually the taper is pretty good and all it is that they're doing. The difference is that they're growing a trunk out.
This is a little general. They're growing a trunk out.
Okay. It's going to be a certain size and it's not going to have tapered because when you grow a tree out, it has no taper, it's just a pole. And you're just trying to get some kind of size.
It doesn't naturally grow taper on its own unless it's a full size tree, right? So you're growing this pole and all they're doing really is they're cutting low enough and picking a new branch to take over and not growing that branch as big as the original branch, which is the trunk.
It's say a third smaller, let's just say. Right, let's just say that's our, our, our taper change.
So you're growing this trunk and let's put out some numbers, right? Let's say the trunk is 8 inches wide.
They chop it fairly low, they pick a new leader and they grow that six inches wide.
And then they chop a big chunk of that and they grow it 4 inches wide and they keep repeating that and you get this consistent taper.
Now, like you said, okay, from the trunk to the next taper, it's usually longer and then shorter, shorter, shorter from there. And then you can integrate that in.
What growers here seem to be doing is that they're growing trunks for that pole instead of cutting it very short to grow the second section of the trunk.
They think that they're finished growing the trunk, so they chop it way up high and they grow a new leader thinking that's the apex.
So you either have no taper change and then a sudden taper change on the top and then they end up growing it too long, just like the base, right? It's just a repeat and then there's your tree. Then that's okay. Okay, customer, it's time for you to buy a tree that has weird taper, sometimes no taper, or sometimes it has taper, but the tree just naturally happened to grow taper and it just worked out. That happens too. It's not always just poles and it, it, it seems like it's, it's.
The shortfall is just a technical thing. It's just an inexperience in growing material for bonsai.
Now, having said that, until the demand for that kind of taper is there and the demand for bad taper goes down, nothing's going to change, right?
If I'm growing trees that have maybe not the best taper or what I consider pretty good taper, and it say it's not right and a bunch of people buy from me, I'M going to keep growing the same damn thing, right? Yeah, but if one day everybody says, no, we don't want that, I'm not going to just keep growing it. And it was like, oh, what do you want? Right?
Well, we want you to be able to cut it shorter and grow better taper. Right. The demand is not there.
Not, not to say that you shouldn't just buy trees because you want trees, or you're like, well, this is what we got. I'm still gonna, I want something, right? That's fine.
There, there isn't an effort to say, well, I really want that. There's, to my knowledge, not, I'm not trying to offend anybody. To my knowledge, there isn't a grower that's doing that that much or there's no emphasis in that. And I, I can, I can understand why, because, I mean, growing takes time.
To grow a trunk a certain size and then cut it, grow the next phase, the next phase. It takes significantly more time than if you just grew two stages of taper instead of four.
It takes more time, it takes more work, and there's always the risk of, well, am I going to get my return right? Because you were all trying to make a buck, right where we're trying to make a living.
So I, I, I understand why it's going to be hard, but, but I, I haven't seen there, there's some people who have grown really nice stuff, for sure, but nobody I, I'm not, It's not been apparent to me that anybody's really just growing what was fundamentally a very basic way of growing things. Right. Just grow something very big.
This talking about deciduous trees growing, whatever the size is, 8, 10 inches wide, whatever, however long that's going to take at this, take time chopping it really short, growing a new leader and getting that taper.
It takes more time for sure.
The technical part is it's not difficult. That's the thing. It just takes time to do it and to hopefully, you know, when you're growing your second stage, you don't grow it, let it grow too far and then it's big as your first stage, then you just lost a bunch of time. So there's a bit of experience that's required. It's definitely not, I guess, I mean, anybody that grows stuff, right, it's not like, oh, I'm going to grow my first batch and it's perfect.
I mean, you can spend decades being the ideal grower and then hopefully then they pass it on to the next group of growers just like bonsai, people passing bonsai to the next generation of bonsai and they make it better and so forth. The growers have, have to kind of go through that same, same thing.
Now I, I don't spend a lot of time growing trees. I've seen my, like my teacher and what they've grown in the ground.
I'm not trying to say that I know everything about growing, but from, from what I've seen in higher quality deciduous trees in that taper change, you can see evidence of it was grown here, you can see the evidence of it got cut here, healed. It got grown here, it got cut there, it got grown there. And you can see the taper change from the very mechanical, very bonsai by numbers. Step one, step two, step three.
Like you can see it, you don't, you don't have to be a grower to know that's what happened either. Right, for sure.
But I think the limiting factor really is time, right? Is, you know, can you spend 15, 20, 25 years growing a tree to then sell it and then hopefully somebody buys it or is it an eight year thing and then, you know, you got to make some money. Right, I understand, yeah. But it didn't change, it doesn't change the fact that we have trees that doesn't have table or we don't have trees that are like, you know, you see these trees in Japan and they're like 12 inches wide.
Surely we can grow trees 12 inches wide too. But why is it not happening? Right. I know there are people who have done that with tridents and things like that, but it seems like it should be simple enough to do it with other types of trees too. But it's just not, not quite there. Maybe the demand isn't high enough or there's not as many bonsai people that do it, so it's harder to do it or make a living doing it. So of course, why would somebody do it?
That part? I don't know. I don't for sure.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: I've got some stuff I'm growing, but for myself or just for fun, you know.
And I guess one thing that I think about is I'm growing trees out, growing that pole.
But then rather than like just cutting it to nothing and then letting something sprout out, I've got the next thing wired already.
So I cut and I have something that's way thinner, but I still need to thicken that piece.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that's a very, that's a very good point.
And, and I think you can do that because you're dealing. And so this becomes a just like when like kind of your average bonsai enthusiast decides to grow something in the ground or they try to start a tree as a project. Right.
Is that when you get into growing, say 10 trees, you would tend to do something like what you're doing because it takes a certain amount of time to pick those branches wired, because now you're on your knees and all that stuff.
[00:54:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: But let's say for example, you're like a big time grower and you're growing a thousand trees.
Now it becomes impractical to say, go through and try to find that branch and wire it and then remember to take the wire off and all that stuff. Right?
[00:54:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:35] Speaker A: Because you're dealing with thousands of trees and so they, they have the luxury of, well, I don't have to do that. I'm just going to go ahead and chop it and 90% of them will grow the top that I need, 10% will not. And then I just get rid of them. Yeah, it's faster doing that. For sure, for sure. Just like when people are growing trees or they get into bonsai and they decide to grow something.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Okay, we're back.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Okay, so.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: So we're talking about growing trees out and.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, like what you're doing, growing stuff in the ground.
Yeah. You can go through and do a little bit more detail type of stuff because you can deal with like the 10 or 20 that you're growing. Right. Just like the, like the.
I am kind of curious. Like, I know you're growing umay in the ground and some of them are pretty big. The last time I was there. Would you say some of them are like 8 inches wide?
Even bigger. Like, like about that, yeah. So how long did it take for you to grow that?
[00:55:51] Speaker B: Well, that's like my biggest one is. Is that big?
[00:55:53] Speaker A: Okay. And then the other ones are.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: Maybe the other ones are smaller.
[00:55:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so say 8 to 12 inches.
[00:56:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I started them from cutting.
[00:56:03] Speaker A: Okay, so just a little twig.
[00:56:05] Speaker B: Yep, just little twig. And that was at my last house.
I've lived at my current house for fucked.
So maybe 10ish years.
[00:56:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you're growing the. These umes and it's about 10 years to get that size. And it's like. And then for growing deciduous tree. I know we're just saying deciduous trees, but for trees like ume, it's a lot of times it's not as simple as. Well, I grew the trunk a certain size and then I just chop it. Right. They don't heal wounds either, and. Yeah, right. So. So there's challenges on different types of trees. If it's like a maple, usually you can heal wounds. Generally that's the case. You can heal wounds and then you just keep. You can follow them. Step one, step two, step three. For trees that don't heal wounds like Umay, then it's a little bit different.
Now, for the most part, nobody really cares about taper on Umay that much, so you might not have to do that.
It's really just size bark.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: If the trunk is whole versus it having dead wood.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: It's funny, if I could go back in time, I would not grow ume. Yeah.
[00:57:16] Speaker A: Just grow a different. You know, and that's. That's the interesting thing, right. Because now you've grown, say, a certain amount of Ume, you. It took 10 years so far. You're getting kind of. There's a result. You're thinking about what you could have done different or what you made do different from now on. And now it's another 10 years. Right. To implement that. And then you learn something there, and it's another 10 years to implement that. Yes.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: That's what pisses me off about growing.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Is like, you would do a way better job now with all the knowledge that you get.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: I guess that's bonsai in general.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: That. That's true. That is true. So, I mean, that's the difficulties in growing. Right. You can.
[00:58:02] Speaker B: It's.
[00:58:03] Speaker A: It's just like if somebody bought a vineyard.
[00:58:05] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: Or maybe not bought a vineyard, but started a vineyard and they planted grapes and it's like. Yeah. You won't really start making any wine until 15 years later because you're just figuring out the process of how to grow.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I wonder, like, for example, with you, your trident maple. Right.
It looks phenomenal. It's nothing's. It is so, so good. Right.
But if you would start it now.
[00:58:33] Speaker A: It would be better.
[00:58:33] Speaker B: It might be a lit.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:58:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:58:38] Speaker A: It would be better. Yeah.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: That's the trick.
[00:58:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:41] Speaker B: Pisses me off.
[00:58:42] Speaker A: Well, yeah. Like, could have done that. It could have, should have. Right. Those things.
It is interesting because at least some of the newer trees that I'm working on, I'm implementing the things that I have learned off of that tree.
And so the newer trees that I'm developing are better for that. Right.
It doesn't mean I'm. Doesn't mean my first tree is all bad. Or anything. But I am going to continue rolling with it. Oh, nice. So I'll just say it is what it is. Okay.
Yeah. Would I have done something better with the nabari? A little bit. Yeah. I could have made it better. Could the branches be better? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or the branches are.
It wasn't even the branches on my trident is not as good as some of the newer ones because when I was learning how to develop, I made all the mistakes on that tree. Right.
And once you get past a certain size on the tree, as the tree gets bigger, you don't get those branches back. You'd have to restart the tree. And I just never did that.
So it's not as dense as I would normally like it. Whereas my, my client's tree, where I started later, is denser.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: And has more better branches. Right.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: And so can we talk about density just a little bit? I feel like that's another maybe pitfall in the US I feel like a lot of people like trees that are what I would consider kind of thin. Or say if you go to Kokufu, you see the prize winning Korean hornbeam.
It's crazy dense.
[01:00:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the, from, from what I get in Japan is for, at least for deciduous trees that if you have density in the tree, it. It tends to help in showing that it's very old. And then that's why they do that. Not every tree is super dense and not every tree has to be super dense to win Kokofu.
But it tends, generally speaking, it tends to show more age and they like that. It shows more refinement. Look at all these little branches. Right? There's so many, it almost seems ridiculous. Yeah, right. But again, when you're looking at a giant old tree, it's not like they have only five branches. There's a lot of branches, so many you don't try to count them anymore. You just know there's a lot.
So when you're looking at a small tree, like a bonsai, and it just has so many branches on it, it gives you a sense of like this is some old mature tree. Right. It's grown that dense because that tree is so old, it's found every, every speck of sunlight that it can get. A branch is there to get it right. You know, the leaf at the end of that branch is there to get it. There's no gaps.
Old trees don't have a bunch of gaps. They don't just let this sun.
Oh yeah, there's a bunch of sunlight here. We're just not going to take advantage of that. That's what young trees do. They haven't gotten there yet. Right. Old trees have found every crevice of sunlight they can get. Right. So this is super wide, full trees, round canopies. They found it. All right.
Now, having said that, if you have a tree that's more spaced apart, that could be a stylistic reason, right? You're not, you're, you're showing something different generally for deciduous tree, I think because we don't see a lot of really full deciduous trees. That's still kind of the favorite right now. Now, will that change if, say, we've seen so many really full trees that we actually want to see a little bit more spacing? Maybe not spacing in between the branches, but I mean, spacing in between the little branches, but maybe bigger spacing in between the bigger branches and some, some bigger gaps. Right. Like you think of when you see like a juniper or something.
[01:02:40] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. We were talking about acquired tastes.
[01:02:46] Speaker A: Earlier.
[01:02:47] Speaker B: The other day, and I wonder if density and branching, or maybe I, I feel that density is kind of an acquired taste.
[01:02:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's an understanding thing.
Right. As we all find out that, you know, at, at we can, we can look at something if we don't really understand the reasoning behind it, we just kind of come up with our own reason behind it and then we decide we like it or we don't. Right. But then you get one nugget of information and you're like, oh, that's why they did that. And maybe you have an appreciation for that and now you, you change. Right. And so, oh, I understand it better. Right. I was just missing a piece of information that didn't allow me to maybe enjoy it for what it really is.
And so I find that it's, it's just really a, a misunderstanding. I think if people studied bonsai a little bit more or studied, you know, the reasonings, why things are the way they are currently, they may actually have an appreciation for it.
It is kind of funny, though, because I've run into many instances where talking to people who started in bonsai who have been doing bonsai or have been doing bonsai for a long time.
Not all, but I've run into people that will look at a tree that's a certain style, say it's a Japanese tree, and they'll make certain comments.
And I, I used to be a little bit upset at first because I was like, well, you don't even understand it right now. I'm not even really that upset. It's, it's just, it's just a, it just becomes was because you don't know the reason behind it. That's all it is. Right. It's a, it's not a bad thing. It's just, you're just ignorant to it. Ignorant, not like a bad thing. It's just you didn't, you don't know the reasoning behind it. That's all it is. And then once you, you explain the reason behind it or a lot of times people reference photos and then they'll make these assumptions and then you show the tree, show them the tree in person and then the reaction's like a total 180.
Like they love this tree. I was like, it's the same tree in the photo that you were saying, well, that's too full or that's cookie cutter. Right. But when the tree's three dimensional in person, it's like, wow, how do I get my tree to look like that? And it's like, it's the same tree. Yeah, right. What happened? What changed? Right.
So, so I, and that's why it's important for, for people to. In bonsai to it. You don't have to like something because the Japanese are doing or whoever's doing it, whoever says it's how you're supposed to do it.
But there should be an effort in at least understanding what they're trying to do. And you may find that you actually like that. Yeah, right. Like, well, you might say, okay, I see what they're trying to do, but that's just not my thing. And then you go off and you do your thing. Right. And that's perfectly acceptable. Right. There's nobody saying you can't do that. Even in Japan, nobody says you can't do that. Right. But if you want to do it, say this way. Well, these are some things we tend to do. Right. You don't do some other thing and say, this is what you, you're doing. Japanese bonsai, for example. Right. So there is a recognition and which, which is funny because a lot of people don't realize that either.
And, and it, it is true that a lot of people that make these assumptions, they, some of the people that make the biggest assumption about Japanese bonsai had never been to Japan.
Right. They've never seen the trees in person.
I was like, you can't really make that call.
Right. If you've never been there or you've never really seen a studied person. Yeah. You've never seen him in person at least.
I mean, and we can, I can even argue that seeing something in person, you're just as oblivious to not seeing it in person because you don't even know what you're looking at. Right. There is, you, there still requires an effort to understand what you're looking at and some study and, and you may be surprised in what you learn. Right. And you, you take the good with the bad, right?
Yeah, I, I, I know I don't like this kind of style. And you study it and you have to accept the fact that maybe I do like some, some version of it or maybe I really like it a lot or you find out, yeah, I dislike it, just like I thought. Right. But at least you tried to understand. At least you can respect it. Well, that is that, right? I'm doing something different.
I, I respect that. I appreciate that. And that's perfectly acceptable and that's fine.
It's, it's, the lack of trying to understand is really the, the problem sometimes.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: That's a great point, and I, I absolutely love that. I think sometimes maybe I don't give it as much effort as I should, but I think seeking to understand is so vitally important. I'm glad that you emphasize that. I want to think about that more.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And we don't always all have to be like perfect about it, and we have to like super study and all that stuff. Just, just know that it's always kind of there. We don't have to study it day to day or anything, but just kind of keep your ears open. Maybe there's, or at least keep, keep your mind open. Right. Maybe there's something to it. I mean, there are styles that I don't like right now I can say I don't, I'm, that's not my cup of tea. Right.
But I have to be real. I have to be real about it. Right. I have to ask myself, well, I don't know anything about it.
If I don't know anything about it, how could I possibly say I don't like it? For sure, because it's just, it's just like first impression, no logic behind it, just purely emotion. I don't think I like that. Right. But I know nothing about it. So how much can I really say that I dislike it?
Maybe, you know, it's okay to say, well, I don't think I like it.
It's okay, right?
[01:09:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Until I actually really, like, look into it. Can I really verify that? Right. Or maybe there's something part in part that I do like and maybe I can Incorporate that into my design. Right. Which would make, I think, me myself better.
So just keeping an open mind.
Yeah. Because it gets kind of boring if you're just like, studying. Studying. I'm not saying you have to do that, but just keep an open mind. You'll be surprised. And what you can learn, however wacky or crazy you think something might be, for sure. And, and it could just be crazy too. That's. That's, yeah. 100% possible, right?
Totally. But you never know. You just never know.
Very nice. I like it.
[01:10:03] Speaker B: You know, I guess I am curious. We, we said this term a few times, I think so far on the podcast, but the term cookie cutter.
[01:10:14] Speaker A: Do.
[01:10:14] Speaker B: You have general thoughts on that term?
[01:10:19] Speaker A: You know, I never thought about it really in depth though.
I've heard people referencing, you know, cookie cutter, and most of the time it is a reference to, say, Japanese bonsai. Right.
Not to give it any merit in the sense that most of the people that I've heard say, oh, yeah, it's just cookie cutter have always seen pictures in the book. They've never seen the trees in person.
I mean, I, I thinking about it now, I mean, I would just break it down, right. What, what is the, what is the root of cookie cutter? Right. Okay. We have a cookie. We're cutting all the cookies the same, right. It's just a repeat of the same. That's the exact replica of, of something.
And most of the time I find that when somebody says something is cookie cutter is.
I guess the question really is, is it exactly the same?
It's easy to say it is the same because sometimes it doesn't require a lot of effort. Right.
You say, well, it kind of has the general shape. So it's cookie cutter. Yeah.
Well, it has this triangular shape.
But most bonsai have triangular shapes. We don't really say they're all cookie cutters.
I mean, most trees grow triangular shape.
[01:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:43] Speaker A: Do we say all trees are. You know, when we walk in a redwood forest, we don't say, oh, they look at cookie cutter tree. Those things suck.
It's like, why is it applied now? Right.
So if something's great and you see 10 of them, I'd like to see all 10. I, I wouldn't say, well, they're just cook. Well, maybe, I don't know. Hard to say.
No, I mean, so, so in my experience, when somebody says cookie cutter, most of the time it's most of the time and in. And again, this is my experience is most of the time the people are saying that two things Is that they're not looking deep enough into the details. They're just, they're generalizing.
So, yeah, all trees, all bushes are round.
You can all say they're all cookie cutters. But the people who look at them a little bit more deeply is like, well, no, this one's a little bit more conical. This is a little bit more like a ball.
This is a little bit, you know, so it, it becomes kind of a.
Well, are you seeing kind of the small details and that's the different thing. And in, in Japanese, again, Japanese aesthetics, a lot of times it can be so subtle that at first glance you might say it's cookie cutter. But if you really stop and study it, you find out that it could be very different.
It's just. You weren't again, paying attention, right?
Because it's the, the differences are so subtle, but it, but the meaning can be so greatly different just from those small subtle things. Just like, I mean, for all of us, right now is repotting season, right. We've all experienced this, right? You, you're putting a tree in a pot. You, you're looking at the front and you're saying, okay, I want this to be my front. This is where it's going to be positioned in the pot.
You're looking at. Okay, great. You turn it 5 degrees and the tree somehow is so from such a little change.
Now, at first glance, if somebody's new, they might not see the difference, Right. But because you know a little bit more about bonsai, it made the biggest difference. Yeah, the tree went from okay to great just from that little change. Whatever the characteristics that you show. Now, because you changed at 5 degrees, it wasn't 180 degrees.
Right. That's really different.
Everybody sees that. But very few people see the five, the five degree change. And why that's so much better. It requires a lot more experience or understanding of bonsai or the little things that you see that changes that. That makes everything so much better.
So. Yeah, you know, the interesting thing is I have not heard cookie cutter in a while, but I think that's only because.
I don't work with as many people as I used to also.
Or I don't work with as, as. As many newer people or, or maybe I've worked with, or I'm working with people who maybe have a little bit better understanding of.
Well, you know, that's just a little too general.
Nothing's ever really that simple.
That it's actually rare that things are just cookie cutter in art.
[01:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:15:11] Speaker A: Right. When you get into that. And that's not a concept that is.
I don't know how I would place it.
But I do think that people who have appreciation for art rarely will say that anymore. Yeah. You know, there's so many variables in it that that seems too generalized.
Like what does that even mean?
Oh, you paint. Well, that other person paints.
You guys paint the same. You're using the same. It's like. No, that's how that works. Right.
[01:15:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I do think it's really cool that you studied at I Chan under Mr. Tanaka as I think he has some, some trees that are extremely high level but the polar opposite of cookie cutter and kind of crazy to some people.
[01:16:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I, and I do appreciate that. Right. That is studying there and understanding kind of the, the family philosophy as they, they weren't, they weren't afraid to have things that were different and, and that, that goes against what most people think. You know, when you go to Japan and you, oh, they're, they're going to be very rigid about things and you know, and in some cases, yeah, they're very rigid about a lot of things. Right.
But you find out that. Well, it's actually not as, it's not that crazy rigid. Right. There are people who are experimenting and trying things and uh, like Mr. Tanaka. Yeah, yeah. And his father and his great grand. And his grandfather and so forth. Right.
That they, they, they did try to do things a little different. And you know this, they weren't all, they weren't all successes. Right. But there was some that did succeed.
And so I, I do give him credit because it, it helped shaped how I kind of view bonsai. Because I, I do like some, I do like what, I mean air quotes. Right. Classic Japanese style aesthetic. Bonsai. Right. I do like that. And that does change over time. If you look at old Kokofu books versus modern Kokofu book, it did change. It's not like it stayed the same for 100 years for sure. It definitely has changed. And there's styles that pop up and styles that go away, styles that stay.
Things get cleaner, more refined and so forth.
Oh.
But yeah, I, I did appreciate it. And I don't know if it's a western influence or it's just. I, I don't know, I can't say for sure. But yeah, they diff. They definitely appreciated kind of the funkiness in some trees. And it was always. And which is why I say this, it was always related to age.
Like it was kind of like, you know, it is a little funky but the tree's so old, you just gotta roll with it.
You have to accept it for what it is. Which is kind of just a bigger philosophy of life. Right. Than just some trees we're working with. Right. It's just, it's just too old to mess with. You know, you just got to respect that. Right.
And so you, you just kind of appreciate it for what it is at that point.
So. So you get kind of these unorthodox kind of style, what you would think is not classic style. Right. And it ends up being really nice because does kind of fit in some other aesthetics that they appreciate. It might just not be all of it, but it hits some of those key points. Right. Like age, longevity, Kind of different, but not like wacky different, but it's like tasteful different. You know, there's.
There's that. Right.
Uh, it, it doesn't happen on every tree, but on some trees it just kind of works out. And you have to kind of.
You have to recognize that and then, and then, and then. And show that off, you know, hide it.
You don't try to change it to conform into some rigid set. And, and that, that was one of the most interesting things about going to Japan and doing an apprenticeship is that when I was studying bonsai here, I actually got very rigid on what was the so called rules. And when I went to Japan, I became less rigid in bonsai, which is the complete opposite of what most people thought would happen.
[01:19:52] Speaker B: That's so interesting.
[01:19:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Bonsai became much more freer when I went to Japan to study it.
Right. Than before.
So.
So maybe what I'm saying is that if you want to understand bonsai a little bit better, you should go to Japan and check it out at least. Right.
You go to hunter koko food. Right. It's coming around.
You can still book your flights.
Flights are not that expensive. February is not a busy tourist season in Tokyo. It's also the coldest month in Tokyo, but it's not that bad a cold.
[01:20:32] Speaker B: Bring some warm clothes.
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Just bring some more. If you're from the Midwest, it's going to be. You're wearing shorts. Yeah, no problem. Nice. Nice.
Awesome.
[01:20:42] Speaker B: Well, I think my phone is about to die.
[01:20:45] Speaker A: Okay.
All right.
[01:20:47] Speaker B: Can I ask you one more question?
[01:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:20:51] Speaker B: One thing that I was curious about is it seems like with conifer bonsai, the goal is to make a tree look as ancient as possible.
[01:21:05] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:21:05] Speaker B: Or very close to, like, like very, very old.
As in it grows very old in nature.
[01:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:12] Speaker B: Whereas with deciduous, it still make the tree look very, very old, but maybe not as far of an age as with conifer.
[01:21:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's very interesting.
And I, I think that statement generally is. Is semi true. Right.
Can a Japanese maple ever look as old as a really old black pine?
Would they ever show the same age?
I mean, I'd, I'd have to think about it. But my, my initial reaction is no, they don't show the same age. Because if we're, if we're looking at it from a naturalistic standpoint is that deciduous trees just don't grow, don't stay. They're not actually that old. Right. Well, they.
[01:22:03] Speaker B: Relative to.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, you know, you never see a Japanese maple that's 300 years old. There's no such thing, is there?
[01:22:09] Speaker B: Not 300.
[01:22:10] Speaker A: I don't think so. Or, or at least. Or let's just say. Okay, you don't see a Japanese mo. That's 500.
[01:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:22:16] Speaker A: Okay. Right.
Just like here, for us, it's pretty rare that an oak tree is 150 years old. That's like pretty old.
300 years old.
I don't think that really happens. Is there such a thing?
[01:22:32] Speaker B: I, I have no idea on the age of oak trees.
[01:22:35] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. So anyway, I wonder. I'm not sure.
[01:22:39] Speaker B: Yeah, but I, I get where. I get where you're at. Whereas Sierra junipers, I know that they can get into the thousands.
[01:22:45] Speaker A: They can get into the thousands. Black pines can be 300 years old. Japanese maples. I don't. I don't think so. So, so, yeah, that, that's a very interesting point is if we're, if we're looking at an age thing, can we ever make a Japanese maple look as old as a black pine? I, My initial reaction is no, because they never really are that old relative to like a black pine.
I mean, if you're just searching for a tree that is like the oldest possible, then you might as well just go with all junipers because they're going to be the oldest stuff you can find for the most part.
[01:23:20] Speaker B: Bristlecone pine.
[01:23:21] Speaker A: Pine. Yeah. Right.
But.
So, yeah, you, you style a, A juniper or black pine to make him look old. There's a certain kind of look to that kind of age where. Yeah, we don't tend to apply those things to a maple, maybe because it's just not really required because they don't really get that old. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's something to really think about. But yeah, my, my initial kind of gut reaction to that is, yeah, they don't. Because they don't technically naturalistically get that old anyways.
So we show what is considered old for that tree.
[01:24:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's still a very mature old Japanese maple.
[01:24:07] Speaker A: It's just not just relative to itself. Yeah.
[01:24:10] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[01:24:11] Speaker A: Relative to other trees. It's. It's just a different tree. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe we shouldn't try to make them look the same age either. Right.
Yeah. What does a 500 year old Japanese maple look like? Nobody knows. Because there's no such thing. Yeah. It'd be just. It's dust. Right.
But maybe we have an idea what a hundred year old one looks like and that's considered old. And maybe they don't last much longer than that.
I think Japanese maple, I think it's somewhere like eighty hundred years or something. They say. Okay. I mean in bonsai form, it. It will last longer.
[01:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:24:50] Speaker A: Just because of the care that we. We give them.
But there's a natural J. It'll be something I Google. Yeah. Yeah. Once a Japanese people live.
[01:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:24:59] Speaker A: But yeah, they definitely don't live like a thousand years. Like a juniper. For sure. Yeah, for sure. Awesome.
[01:25:05] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, hey, it's been extremely fun chatting with you.
[01:25:10] Speaker A: I. Yeah, yeah. Same as always. I mean.
[01:25:12] Speaker B: Yeah, there's probably nothing I'd rather be doing right now.
[01:25:15] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, cool.
[01:25:16] Speaker B: I love hanging out with you, chatting bonsai. It's super fun for me. And doing all this bonsai work we've been doing together has just been absolutely so much fun for me.
[01:25:26] Speaker A: Oh, great. Great. I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah, it's. It's fun for me too, so. Cool.
[01:25:32] Speaker B: Well, really appreciate the time and I hope I can get you on. Convince you to be on another episode.
[01:25:38] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:25:39] Speaker B: It sounds good.
[01:25:40] Speaker A: Thank you, Jeremiah. Thank you, Peter.
