The North Carolina Arboretum’s bonsai enterprise began with a donation of little trees in 1992. Visitors, when they hear this story, often ask how many of those original trees remain in the collection. As usual when a question arises regarding numbers, I’m obliged to truthfully respond that I don’t know. I know which trees in our collection were part of the original donation, and counting them wouldn’t be difficult because only a handful remain, but too much of life has been reduced to numbers already and I’m not inclined to give in to that way of thinking. Someday someone else will count them and then there will be one less thing in the world to wonder about.

As it happens, both trees featured in this entry were part of the original bonsai donation. One is a common boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), a shrub native to Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. This species is favored for hedging, which is typically an indication of suitability for bonsai use. Hedges take a lot of pruning and so do bonsai.

The other specimen is known in our collection as a box orange (Atalantia buxifolia), sometimes otherwise also called Chinese box-orange or boxthorn. The species is in the Rutaceae or citrus family and does have little thorns, although it is not an “orange”. Its leaves look a little bit like those of a boxwood, but there’s no relation otherwise. Common plant names are often misleading.

Our boxwood bonsai is currently on display in the garden, although that won’t be the case for long. Past experience tells us that this specimen resents being in full sunlight during the heat of summer. Boxwood hedges grow in full sun without complaint, but circumstances are often different for plants grown in containers as compared to having their roots in the ground. In spring and autumn our boxwood does fine out on display, while in summer it performs better in the hoop house under fifty-percent shade cloth.

When the boxwood is taken off display, it will likely be replaced by the box orange. Box orange is native to southern China and requires overwintering in a greenhouse in our horticultural zone. Heat and full summer sun has proven to be no problem for this species. Knowing the needs and tolerances of different species and even of individual plants is part of bonsai curation.

Common Boxwood

This specimen is not in any way spectacular, but visitors seem to find it pleasing. Perhaps the appeal is in the fact that our boxwood looks very convincing as an ordinary tree, the kind you might encounter at a park or see out in the countryside. This bonsai trades in pastoral tranquility rather than drama. Here is what it looked like upon donation:

The boxwood was in better overall condition than most of the little trees in the original donation, although the apex of the tree’s crown was noticeably lacking in branches and foliage. Stylistically, the fact that the trunk starts out as one before dividing into two a little distance above the soil line was bothersome to me at the time. This very common physical characteristic of trees in nature was outside the accepted parameters of correct classical bonsai design for two-trunk trees. I was trying to do things by the book back in those days, and the book said the two trunks were supposed to be clearly differentiated from the point where they emerge from the ground. There was nothing reasonable to be done about this problem, however. Another flaw I identified was the knock-kneed effect where the two trunk lines angled toward each other before deciding to continue on their separate ways. This I could do something about; or I thought I could. For several years I tried to force them further apart by wedging a wooden spacer between the trunks where they threatened to meet up with each other. When I eventually removed the spacer, the two knees went right back to knocking together. As a matter of physical fact, the two trunk lines never actually come in contact, they only seem that way when seen from a certain angle. I eventually found I could increase the visual distance between them by making an alteration to the way the tree was presented. By rotating the “front” of the tree a couple clicks clockwise the trunks were no longer in visual conflict.

This new presentation angle for the boxwood, plus a new container, can be seen in this next image from three years later:

In form, this specimen has not changed very much over the past thirty-plus years. Its foliage has filled out and the container has been changed a few times, but the basic styling has remained consistent with the design first given the boxwood by some unknown person long ago.

The following images track the mostly subtle changes that have occurred with this tree over the years. Take note that somewhere along the way I let go of my hangup about the two trunk lines looking like they come together, choosing instead to accept that characteristic as being part of this individual’s personality. I’ve also embraced the acceptability of a two-trunk tree starting out as a single trunk tree before bifurcating. Trees do this in nature and beauty, as always, is in the eye of the beholder:

The current, round, blue-glazed container was made by North Carolina potter Ron Lang. Here is how the boxwood looks at present, out on display in the garden:

Earlier this year, for the first time, this tree was displayed with what has always been its back side facing the viewer:

The world did not come to an end as a result of this divergence from accepted protocol. In fact, some visitors were heard to express appreciation of the several prominent holes that have always been present but kept out of sight. These are old wounds from cuts made long ago, and age has given them a stable, authentic appearance. Old trees often have holes and people find them interesting.

Box orange

Shortly after the original donation of bonsai arrived at the Arboretum, I had a photographer friend named Jim make a portrait of each. I acted as Jim’s assistant and we started out by first shooting the biggest, most impressive specimens, working our way down the line through the large number of little trees. It took the greater part of a day to do this. Toward the end, we were worn out and down to the rattiest looking specimens, and these received only cursory treatment as photo subjects. If the following image looks like it was made in quick and dirty fashion, that’s because it was:

This particular specimen did not come with any identification as to species and it took years to figure out what it is. There were actually two separate trees, mashed together at the base in an attempt to make a two-trunk bonsai. Don Torppa, the consultant hired by the Arboretum to first wrangle the donated collection into some sort of shape, chose to bypass working on this tree because he didn’t think much of it, either. We discussed it together, though, and he asked me what I thought. I told him I thought the tree on the right might have some potential, but the one on the left was too straight and coarse in its overall shape. Don agreed. He suggested I untangle them, dispose of the coarse one and see what I could do with the better half. This I did.

Once the more desirable tree was separated, I saw there was a problem with its roots. There was one root that emerged several inches higher than the rest, then went flying through the air before finally finding its way down into the ground. A natural response to this sort of situation is simply to remove the offending root. That was not a viable option in this instance because the diameter of the trunk diminished noticeably below the flying root, so that the overall appearance of the tree’s base would be worse without the root than with it.

Bonsai with compromised bases of this description are not uncommon. The best response to the problem is usually to abandon the hope of making a good bonsai out of compromised material, and then go find a better tree to work with. Newcomers to bonsai are typically resistant to giving up on any tree, regardless of its problems, and will instead attempt to find a work-around. The most common solution to a tree with a flying root that can’t be removed is to stick a rock under it. This approach rarely works to good effect, instead producing an outcome that looks like what it is — a bad root with a rock stuck under it.

I was new to bonsai at the time when I was faced with this problem and I responded accordingly. I walked outside my workshop and found an interesting rock that seemed to be the right size, then positioned it at the base of the box orange with the rogue root draped over it. I felt pretty clever for coming up with this novel solution!

Here is an image of how this specimen looked two years later:

Our box orange is considered part of the tropical portion of the Arboretum’s bonsai collection. The species may in fact be a sub-tropical plant, but the fact that it wouldn’t likely survive a western North Carolina winter without protection in a greenhouse means box orange gets classified as a “tropical” for our purposes. For no good reason I can think of, I’ve always been biased in favor of the temperate portion of our collection. One way this bias has manifested itself is in poorer photo documentation of our tropical trees. This is why there are large gaps of time between the few pictures I have of this specimen. The next available image of the box orange was made sixteen years after its predecessor:

A comparison of the two previous images, focusing on the base of the tree, reveals that a good deal of growth has occurred. Whereas in 1995 the rock plainly appears to have been wedged in under the flying root, by 2011 the base of the box orange is engulfing the rock. The tree and the rock are now wed, for better or for worse. Meanwhile, the crown of the tree was taking longer to develop.

Two years later, the container had been changed and the crown had filled out noticeably:

The following year I did better in documenting the work being done on this specimen. The first image shows the box orange prior to a pruning session, and the next four depict the results, in-the-round:

The rather bizarre appearance of the tree when seen from the side view is attributable to my taking too seriously the teaching that a bonsai should incline toward the viewer. If a person goes along with the idea that bonsai do indeed have a “front”, then there is some benefit to having the tree lean a little that way as regards perspective — the tree appears to be looming over the viewer, as full sized trees do in real life. But this also commits the person displaying the bonsai to always present it the same way. I no longer see the value in having a designated front to a bonsai if it can be helped, preferring to design little trees so that they might be displayed and enjoyed from multiple angles. In any event, the lean I gave to this box orange was badly overstated. Once this error is committed, it’s difficult to undo.

As previously stated, one advantage enjoyed by the tropical portion of our bonsai collection is that those trees are good for summer display in the garden. This next image shows the box orange being employed that way:

Here is the box orange as it currently appears, awaiting its upcoming time in the summer sun. The container for this specimen is the work of Eli Akins, of Waldo Street Pottery in Georgia:

Stick a rock under it…

Original Boxes