What is a Bonsai and what is not?

What is a Bonsai? It is important to say that not everything that is planted in a Bonsai pot is. Many garden centers and nurseries offer newly rooted cuttings for sale that have been given their own Bonsai design, and they sell them at a price much higher than the price they would actually have in an ordinary pot .

Bonsai means tree on a tray. But it is a tree that for many years has been given a style, a shape, a design, in short, specific care  that makes us imagine ourselves in a true natural landscape.

Any woody plant can be used for this technique, regardless of the size of its leaves (although preferably those with small leaves are used more), with a trunk thickness greater than one centimeter.

What is not a Bonsai, according to veteran masters of this Art?

  • Herbs or woody succulents
  • All those plants of the genus Cicadaceae
  • Palms
  • Very young trees (less than a centimeter thick) without any form
  • caudiciform plants
  • Cuttings planted in a pot

However, there are those who say that some of these mentioned plants are, or at least they can become Bonsai companion plants, the so-called accent plants . These little plants may or may not have a style, but it is important that they somehow match the meaning of the potted tree next to them.

The theme is served. Nowadays the moderns meet with the veterans, and each one will defend his opinion. But, what surely will never change, is the essence of this Art, which is patience, a virtue that nature has, and that everyone who wishes to enter this world must have, in order to understand it better.

What is a Bonsai and what is not?

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