Visitors to the Expo were encouraged to vote for their favorite bonsai and in 2013 John’s baldcypress won hands down. Small wonder — the specimen is big and obviously old, and to see such a tree growing in a container defies belief for the average person.

Foliage is wonderful, of course, but on a deciduous species the foliage is absent half the year. In the landscape, a naked Japanese cutleaf maple can still be beautiful for its form, particularly in the display of its branching and finely articulated twigs. The same can be true of a Japanese cutleaf maple bonsai when seen without its leaves. It can be true, but is not automatically so.

Mr. Martin had a diverse collection with some older looking specimens, and seemed to like his little trees to be on the large side. Most amazingly, a substantial portion of Mr. Martin's bonsai, including some of the larger, older looking pieces, were trees he had grown himself from seed.

We were The North Carolina Arboretum in the Southern Appalachian region of the United States, engaged in the business of building our own identity, which would primarily reflect our own unique place in the world. The three gardens comprising the Arboretum's core area, opened to the public just a year earlier, all modeled this approach.

I knew a challenge when I heard one. I went home that night and stayed up late to write out a statement by hand, then went to work the next day and asked my friend Cindy to type it up for me. Then I made sure the Executive Director and everyone else in administration received a copy.

Of the six or seven trees Kent had rounded up for our consideration, the one at which he now pointed was easily the least impressive. It was another pine, a Japanese black pine by the looks of it, wildly overgrown and terribly leggy. I didn’t see anything to recommend it.