Shortly after the Staples' bonsai donation arrived I asked a photographer friend to come to the Arboretum and document the specimens we received. The photographer's name was Jim. He brought his camera equipment and the necessary material to make a small set in which to shoot the trees. It took a long time because there were many trees, some of them large and heavy and others much smaller, and adjustments had to be made for each subject. We started with the larger specimens, working downward in size to the smaller ones. At the very end we were getting tired and the remaining trees were pretty scraggly. There were two little fig trees that appeared to be the same unknown species and neither of them were much to look at, so Jim suggested we put them together into one shot. Here's the photograph that was made of them that day:

Subsequent research would identify these two specimens as Green Island figs, which for many years we misidentified botanically as Ficus nitidia. The genus Ficus includes about eight hundred fifty species. Most ficus are native to the tropics, with only a few species found in warmer temperate zones and none of them native to North Carolina. At the risk of showing my ignorance, I confess to thinking a great many ficus species and their associated cultivars look the same. There seems to be much confusion even among people who know them better as to which common name properly belongs to which species, or even as to which species are actually proper species as opposed to being subspecies or variant forms of other species. Just a few years ago we came to understand that the plants we were calling Ficus nitidia, should properly be called Ficus microcarpa, so we changed our labeling accordingly. Some things are worth fighting about and some aren't. We will go on calling our two specimens Green Island until shown to be wrong about that, too.

More to the point, it turned out that those two scraggly fig trees not only survived, but grew into respectable specimens that remain in our collection today. Many other trees from that original donation looked more promising back then and were photographed individually for that reason, but ultimately proved not to have the right stuff. It is impossible to know what the future might hold for young and undeveloped talent. When I was young and collected baseball cards, the card manufacturers treated rookie baseball players the same way for the same reason. "Rookie" cards combined two unknown young players on one card. Usually, neither of the players would amount to much, but occasionally one would. Rarely, both did:

The player on the left went on to a nineteen-year career as a Major League pitcher, winning more than two-hundred games. The player on the right went on to a twenty-seven year career, won more than three-hundred games and was eventually enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. As a kid I had that baseball card and I suppose I should have held on to it!

For reference purposes, it will be useful in this entry to give these two Green Island figs names by which they can be distinguished from each other. Tempting as it is to name one of them "Koos" and the other "Nolan", we will refer instead to their differing postures. The tree that was on the left in the original photograph leans strongly to one side, lending itself to being identified as the slanting fig. The tree on the right stands straighter, so we can call it the upright fig.

The upright fig came to us with a more developed trunk. Unfortunately, the base of the tree was quite poor, with one good-sized surface root that jutted straight out for an inch or so before making a sharp right-angle turn downward. Another surface root shot out from the opposite side of the trunk and traveled along the soil surface, changing its direction when reaching the wall of the container and proceeding to loop about in silly fashion before finding its way below the soil line. Ficus roots generally do things other tree roots don't. Sometimes unusual roots can have appealing visual interest and sometimes they are simply ungainly. I didn't think the roots of the upright fig looked good, so in 1994 I decided to try my hand at air-layering. I didn't know it at the time, but ficus makes an excellent choice for a first attempt at air-layering because they are so ready to produce roots virtually anywhere on trunk or limb.

Here is an image of the air-layering in progress:

The attempt was successful. No photo was made of the resulting shorter but still upright fig until this one from 1999 (note the beginning of aerial roots, appearing as threads dangling from trunk and limbs):

Ficus species are typically vigorous growers. Straight-species Ficus microcarpa, growing under ideal conditions in its native Asian tropics, can reach one hundred feet in height. Here is a photograph of one that is wider than it is tall, growing at a botanical garden in Hawaii:

Attribution: Forest & Kim Starr, via Wikimedia Commons

This image from 2012 documents an overall increase in height for the upright fig after thirteen years of controlled growth:

Bigger still and starting to be more slanting in its form, this photo shows the upright fig as part of the winter bonsai display at the Baker greenhouse in 2017:

The picture above shows the upright fig getting too dense with excess branching and foliage, particularly in the upper third of the tree. This sort of piling on of parts, usually accompanied by extension of limbs or apex, happens very slowly right in front of your eyes. It creeps. It looks good for a while to see the plant growing so fully, so strongly and healthily. But eventually it's not good. The shape of the bonsai gradually changes, the definition of it slowly disappearing, until one day you look at it and think, "Ugh, too much!" Then the grower is obliged to weigh in with cutters and sort out what stays and what gets taken out. This part of the process opens the door to creativity. There is no clear right or wrong about what to remove, so it is up to the person with the cutters and how they see the tree before them, and what look they want their tree to attain.

This image from late in 2023 shows the upright (now slanting) Green Island fig after a session where a great deal of branching had been taken out:

The tree as seen above is now in a new pot made by Mark Issenberg of Lookout Mountain Pottery in Tennessee. The pot is unusual with heavy dripping glaze, so it has strong visual interest. My feeling is that this pot lends its strong character to the overall presence of the bonsai. The tree itself, while pleasing enough, wants for more visual excitement and gets it from being in this container.

The slanting fig — the one that was slanting from the beginning — has concurrently been going through its own evolution of appearance. While the upright fig was being air-layered, the slanting fig was growing on uninterrupted, producing new branches that allowed for its overall structure to be increased and developed. This image from 1995 shows the young fig filling out and beginning to build up trunk caliper:

A photograph from four years later shows some significant changes. The tree has grown and now stands more upright, although it is still clearly in the slanting form. In fact, the lower third of the trunk is at the exact same angle it was previously. The greater erectness was achieved by growing the trunk line in a more upward fashion as it extended:

Just as seen previously with the other Green Island fig, the above photo shows the beginnings of aerial roots dangling from the trunk of the tree. Ficus microcarpa are well able to produce aerial roots in moist conditions, and in certain circumstances these can look good, becoming an interesting feature of the bonsai. In this instance, however, just as with the upright fig, I decided that aerial roots were not desirable. They are simply removed now whenever they appear. Note, also, that a large root has been removed from the right side of the base. The way that root traveled through the air before turning downward, creating a sort of window below it, was not appealing.

This image from 2014 presents the slanting fig basking in the summer sun while on display in the bonsai garden:

The prominent branch on the right has been allowed to droop all the way to the the soil line, and a more slender branch on the opposite side does much the same. It is a look particular to this specimen. Not many bonsai in our collection are allowed to do this because it can easily be overdone, creating the appearance of a big mound of leaves rather than a tree.

In 2017 the slanting fig found its way into a different pot with a more shallow profile:

Just as occurred with the upright fig around the same time, this specimen as seen in the above image has become too fulsome. This next photo, made in the garden in 2020, shows the slanting fig after being pruned to address the overgrowth:

This most recent image presents the slanting fig as it currently looks, potted in a container by Robert Wallace of Wallace Woods Pottery in North Carolina:

These two Green Island figs are not the most impressive bonsai in our collection. Neither of them is likely to end up in the Bonsai Hall of Fame. They have their merits, though, not least being that they are still in the game. As my friend Ken once said, "Any plant you can keep alive in a pot for twenty years is going to look like something." These two have been developed as bonsai for more than thirty years and they've come a long way:

Ficus Twofer