As most of you know by now, I am a bonsai enthusiast. I have loved growing bonsais for so many years, and generally prefer to grow them from seed or branch off-cuts than to buy them with money I do not have.

Now, I would like to briefly address the question, What is a bonsai? I have also been asked this many times, and I often forget that not everyone knows what it is.

The word originated from the Japanese, and the word bonsai means a plant, tree or group of trees grown in a container. "Bon" means basin, and "sai" means to plant. Basically, it means to grow a tree, bush or massive plant in the form of a fully mature tree, but in a much smaller scale. Imagine a tree grown the size of your hand.

Bonsai is often called a living art. With paintings and drawings, it may take you hours or days to complete, but there is an end goal. With a bonsai, you can be designing one bonsai for the rest of your life if you choose to. They are called an art form as they are grown to resemble real trees in nature, but placed in a pot and kept small. It's like we are painting on a living canvas.

In some of my bonsai posts or shares from Jnstagram, you may have read me use phrases like "formal upright", "semi-cascading", "slanting.... Well, today is finally the day where I discuss different bonsai styles. There is a difference between bonsai styles and techniques, so don't get confused. Styles refers to the shape and artistic style that you choose to grow your bonsai in. Techniques are the tools, equipment and method that you use to grow your bonsai, such as propagating techniques, pruning, soil type, pinching and wiring, etc. We will get to techniques in another post.

When it comes to styles, there isn't just one style. That would be boring and not artistic at all. Various styles have been developed over the years, by both the Japanese and Chinese as masters of the art, but also strangely enough a few by South Africans, who have taken to creating their own bonsai culture. Today, though, I want to take a look at the more widely known styles used all over the world.

PS: I have placed them in my own groupings below, based on how I believe they should be grouped.

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GROUP 1: TRUNK ART

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FORMAL UPRIGHT - CHOKKAN

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Formal Upright is just as the name implies. The main trunk or stem of the bonsai is trained to grow straight up. The techniques used usually include wiring or using a strip of wood to give it support to grow up until the trunk is strong enough to support itself. Branches are then grown all up the main stem in a way that is artistic to resemble the actual tree in the wild, but the main point is that the trunk rises straight up perpendicular to the soil.

It may sound easy to grow a formal upright. You would think that the tree would just naturally grow that way. But it doesn't. With growing bonsai indoors, the trunk and leaves will turn or bend towards wherever the light is coming from. If you have a window open, the wind can also play a factor. Correcting spacing of branches is also essential, and the correct techniques need to be used to ensure that the trunk continues to grow right up without bending.

I use bamboo skewer sticks as support for my formal upright bonsais, sometimes using thin rope or wiring to keep them in place. Every week, I will turn the contained around away from the sun, forcing the top end to grow the other way. This seems to help maintain the formal upright position. Here below you can see my Blue Jacaranda bonsais, almost a year old, with the bamboo skewer sticks providing support.

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INFORMAL UPRIGHT - MOYOGI

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Informal Upright is very close to Formal Upright, with the main difference being that the informal upright does not have to have a trunk that grows straight up in a straight perfect line, and can be scattered, as long as it is still growing up vertically. This is a more widely known form in the natural environment, and usually branches and flowers are grown on each bend on the trunk.

Growing it in this form takes lots of patience, and deciding at which point you want to bend the trunk. Careful bending and wiring is needed until the trunk stays in that position permanently. This style can be beautiful if done right, especially when flowering takes place.

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SLANTING - SHAKAN

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I personally believe that slanting is the easiest form to grow without much effort. You can leave the bonsai to grow towards the light and not need to change it around. The Slanting style is where the trunk grows towards one side only, instead of upright. This represents trees in the wild where the trunk has grown to the side either from the sun or the wind constantly blowing against it.

The windswept look can really look great for some species of bonsais, especially if the flowers and branches are arranged in the right fashion.

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SEMI-CASCADING - HAN-KENGAI

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Semi-cascading is one of my favourite styles. In nature, you will find them along cliffs, rivers or lakes. This is when the trunk grows over the upper rim of the containers, bends down and grows towards the lower end of the container, but does not surpass it. The crown bends up again and does not grow pass the lower edge.

Some bonsais will grow like this naturally by the power of gravity, and if you place it on a table top, the trunk will bend back up again. Others require stringent wiring in order to take effect.

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CASCADING - KENGAI

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The Cascading Style is much like the Semi-Cascading, except that the trunk grows further than the lowest part of the pot. This is often seen in nature on steep cliffs. Bonsais grow like this through gravity, heavy upper foliage or wiring. Trunks are usually grown much longer than normal bonsais in order to achieve this effect.

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GROUP 2: FOLIAGE ART

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BROOM - HOKIDACHI

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And now we move to style names that are named after the foliage. The Broom style is usually grown on a formal upright or informal upright, but the style is more named after the upper foliage that is shaped like a broom. It has a massive amount of branches, achieved through pinching and cutting of branches to grow more branches, much like they do with fruit trees.

And so this is usually used when growing fruit bonsais, like peach and apple, so that the flowers and fruit are layered around the ball of the crown.

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WINDSWEPT - FUKINAGASHI

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This is one style I have not been able to master just yet. The main focus are the branches rather than the trunk. It provides the appearance that the bonsai has been struggling against the wind its whole existence, even though it has been grown indoors. You can see how the branches all lean in one direction as if the wind has been blowing it that way for years. Usually there are branches only on one side of the trunk.

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CLUMP - KABUDACHI

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Clump style is where you grow a multitude of trunks as if they are separate trees, but in truth they all stem from the same root or structure. The main focus is the upper foliage, that still grows around one structure beautifully, but the trunks appear as if they are separate trees all growing with their branches intermingled.

Sometimes only two trunks are grown, and this is called a twin-trunk or double trunk style (Sokan).

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LITERATI - BUNJINGI

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This style represents trees in nature that are fighting for light and air with other trees around it. As such, they grow their trunk to the very top and grow their branches and leaves on the crown of a long trunk. The lower branches and leaves usually die out from lack of sunlight.

This style is usually complemented with two styles of bark removal, but we will get to that in a moment.

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GROUP 3: BARK ART

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JIN

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Jin is one of the Deadwood styles whereby the bark is removed from a section of the bonsai. Jin refers to the complete removal of the bark around a branch or a section of the trunk to give the impression that that part of the tree is dead. The bark is removed and the wood sanded or left rough, depending on how the artist wants to represent it.

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SHARI

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Shari is another Deadwood style similar to Jin, except that only one side of the trunk or branches are removed. Sometimes Jin and Shari are used on the same bonsai for effect, which can be quite tricky. One needs to make sure that the bonsai is not hurt in the process.

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GROUP 4: ROOT ART

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ROOT ON ROCK - SEKI-JOJU

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One of the styles employed by many bonsai enthusiasts is the Root on Rock, or, Root over Rock. This is where the roots are placed over rocks and then the ends are planted into the soil. This is done at an advanced stage of the trees growth, mostly when the tree is uprooted to clean the roots and provide it with new soil.

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ROOT IN ROCK - ISHISUKI

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A varient of the Root over Rock is the Root in Rock. Same principle, but this time the root is grow within the rock itself to give it that majestic, sometimes mountain look. This takes loads of care, since sometimes if roots grow deep, there may not be space inside. So the rock should provide enough space for growth.

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GROUP 5: LANDSCAPE ART

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FOREST - YOSE-UE

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Another one of my favourite styles. Here, groups of trunks are growing on the same tray or pot closely together to represent a forest of bonsai. The leaves are usually close together. This is not to be confused with the clump style, where several trunks are grown from 1 tree, while in the Forest several trunks are grown from several trees.

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LANDSCAPING - SAIKEI

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Landscaping refers to using several, sometimes different, trees to create landscape scenery. Forests are sometimes seen as Saikei, except that with forests the trees are kept close together, and for Saikei the trees can be very far apart in the same pot or tray, and may be different species for effect.

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RAFTING - IKADABUKI

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Another fantastic bonsai art that I love to employ is Rafting. This is where the actual trunk of the tree grows horizontally, and the branches grow straight up like a row of trunks. They all grow on the same trunk, and sometimes new roots will grow on the underside of the main trunk, as if the trunk has become the main root.

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SWAMP - NUMACHI

Ok, so the Swamp style doesn't officially exist. I created it as can be seen above, and Numachi is Japanese for swamp. Some would argue that this is just another form of Saikei, but I disagree. I have created a landscape where the tray is filled with water, like in a swamp, or river, and the trees, weeds and moss grow over the soil around it. The main difference with this and other styles is the amount of stagnant water that needs to be collected around empty spots.

Care must be taken with this style. Most trees get root rot from laying in water, so only trees that can handle lots of water, like Weeping Willow, should be planted in this style.

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And that's it for my extensive article on bonsai styles. If you liked it, kindly upvote it and I will make sure to write more feature articles on bonsais in the future.

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Kind regards

Shaun M Jooste

Joint-Owner: AIR Entertainment (https://airentertainment.biz)
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Author, Screenwriter, Gamewriter, Journalist (https://celenicearth.wordpress.com)