SYSK Selects: How Bonsai Works

For thousands of years people have been taking normal trees and forcing them into miniature. Learn all about the history and art of this strangely engrossing pastime in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to a Saturday Selects episode. Charles W.
Chuck Bryant here, and this is my week to pick,
and I'm going with how Bonsai Works. We love those
little trees, we love the karate Kid, all those things
wrapped up make bonsai. May sixteen, two thousand sixteen is
when we first recorded this, and I think Josh and

(00:21):
I both promised to get into bondsai since then. Speaking
for myself, I have not, but you never know. I
did get tiny scissors from my nose here, so maybe
I'll use those. Check it out right now, Welcome to
Stuff you should know, a production of my Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

(00:46):
Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. I've decided to
talk about speed right now. Oh yeah, how's it going. Well?
You know there are some weirdos that listened to us
on double Speed. Well they just are like, hurry up
and get to the point, you idiot. Yeah, because you know,
busy lives. They can't listen to forty minutes of content straight.

(01:08):
It always it's funny to somebody tweets to us or
takes the time to write an email say like, I
love your your podcast, but I'm really displeased with the
tangents you go on. You seem to talk about a
lot of stuff that's unrelated. Can you stop doing that?
And um, I always think I don't think Sevy should
notice for you, buddy, if you're if you're being driven

(01:29):
crazy by that, then well yeah, like we would welcome
you to stay. But the tangents are They're part of
the fabric of the show at this point, there's the glue.
Like it or not. I think the whole thing would
be decidedly less enjoyable if we were just like vomiting. Yeah,
just business like you know. Yeah, or maybe after eight

(01:50):
fifty shows we should just completely change how we do it. Yeah,
there you go. That's a great idea. Hey, before we
get started, though, we do want to thank Sam for
gypsums m lord. Oh yeah, yeah, thank you. Sam. We
mentioned the unique Liqueur Chicago brand Liqueur on our PR

(02:11):
show Live in Chicago because you tried it like before
the show. Yeah, well, I've tried it a few times
and it's, uh, it's you know, it's as John Hodgman said,
it tastes like a pencil shavings and Heartbreak as his descriptor.
But Sam heard is talking about Crown Brown Royal. It
was like, wait a minute. They talked about my lord

(02:32):
and I didn't send him anything. Yeah, attention all of
their distillers in America, you can get in on this too. Yeah.
If the makers of Plymouth Gin or Leopold's Gin, or
Knob Creek or Peppy Van Winkle St. George's, they're a
great distillery out of San Francisco. Yeah, Peppy van Winkle. Wow,
we that's the stuff that gets like hijacked and sold

(02:55):
for like twenty dollars on the internet. Yeah. So I'm
just throwing it out there. I'm picking it back up,
bringing it back here, throwing it again. We're happy to
drink your booze and talk about it at nauseam. Uh
you know what else we're happy to talk about, big boy?
What's that bonza? Yes, which you I don't know if
I was saying it wrong, but right before we press record,

(03:16):
you said it's not bonsai, it's bonsai, and I was like,
what's it's not bonsai? Z? Right? That means heads up?
Right right? Right? Bonsai? Or right? Uh? Is? It basically
means plant in tiny container. Yeah, those are the cute
toy trees that Mr Miya made a plastic it depends

(03:41):
target has some definitely have plastic ones. Yeah, if you
search bonsa, it's one of the things that comes up immediately.
It's fake trees. I think it's called like nearly real
for nearly natural something like that. And uh, it does
not look nearly natural. It's like near beer. Do you
ever heard people called non alcoholic beer near beer. I

(04:02):
think it's kind of funny. I used to Um, I
probably shuldn't tell this story. So with bonds I, um, chuck,
we're talking, like you said, the little toy trees. And yeah,
there's plenty of fake bonds I out there, but they're
just kind of it's the same thing as fake flowers.
You know. Well it sort of flies in the face
of what's special about bonsai, which is that it's a

(04:22):
living work of art. Right it does. And a lot
of people are like, well, that's just a weird, freakish
tree that you've been abusing for the last several decades.
Some people actually do criticize bonsai because it is Yeah,
it's it's like docking a dog's tail or. Um, it's
nothing like, but depending on how you feel about plants,
it's it's the same thing. You're taking something that's natural

(04:44):
and literally bending it to your will. So there's an
anti pruning movement going on around the world. Maybe I
don't know if I would go that far to say it,
but um, if you are invested in bonds I, if
you do appreciate bonds eye part of the whole point
of bonds eye as you are taking your creating a
tableau that is a a living depiction of nature rather

(05:08):
than a painting, you're creating a living version of basically
a painting. It's well sculpture, living sculpture. Yeah, yeah, that's
even better, Like you can make it out of sculpie clay.
You could, but then you've you've totally missed the point
of bonding side Well, they'd been fun too, but but
it's something different, right, absolutely, So, um, we're going to

(05:28):
talk about how did how do bonds? I? I have
to say, um is that a verb as well? It is?
Now okay, we're gonna Jerry's is cracking up this episode.
She's she's reading, Uh, what is the guy from Crack's name?
Alfredy Newman's like kind of Oh yeah, he had like
this blond yeah counterpart. Yeah, is that still around because

(05:53):
they're sort of a different thing than they totally. Yeah. Yeah.
There's this great story behind Cracked, Like Cracked was a
round for you know, decades, and it just got left
to languish. And I guess some fan came along and
was like, hey, I noticed, like you're basically just waiting
around for Crack to die. Can I have a stab
at it? A crack at it? I specifically didn't say that,

(06:15):
but yes, and um they're like whatever, kid, go ahead.
And the guy basically resurrected crack Cracked in his basement,
brought it back from the dead, and now it's like huge,
sold for boatload of money. Oh yeah, good for them.
I hope it went to that dude who resurrected it.
That's great. Um, I don't remember how we got onto Cracked.

(06:39):
Jerry was laughing. Oh she was reading Cracked. That's right. Um.
So back to Bonds. I like I said, we're gonna
talk about how two bonds I which like they said
as a verb. Now, um, but let's talk about the
history of it first. Yeah, Like, uh, like many things
in the world, and especially many things that you might
associate with Japan. It started earlier in China before it

(07:00):
made its way to Japan. And in China it was
called well in Japan, did you already say what the
what it literally means? I think you did. Yeah, it
means plant in a tray, plant in a tray. In
China it was punsai, which means tray plant. Not too
far off. And if you go all the way back
to the Tang dynasty, um, they there is evidence, you know,

(07:21):
in tomb paintings that they have these little little prune
trees in shallow pots. Yeah, it's just like part of
the painting in the tomb. It's not like featured, it's
just part of it, kind of depicting regular life. They're like, okay, well,
at least by seven oh six um CE that there
were people doing bonzai in China. Ponies, right, Uh, it

(07:45):
may go back even further than that. There's a legend
that an emperor round about two oh six BC wanted
his entire empire China recreated a miniature in his backyard,
and um, they think they suspect that's possible that that
may have given rise to pontai. That makes sense. You're
like we gotta make tiny trees now because the emperor wants. Yeah. Yeah,

(08:11):
but then either through trade or through gifts, exchanges of
state departments and stuff like that. Right. Um, Japan does
what it always did, and it got its handed on
something and then took it to the nth degree and
perfected and made it awesome. That's what Japan does. That's
what they do. Uh. There's an ancient Japanese scroll that

(08:32):
I found, not literally in my backyard and you're adding
u that I found on the internet. Uh. And it
says this is around the Kamakura period, which was totty
three um. And it says to appreciate and find pleasure
and curiously curved potted trees is to love deformity, which

(08:53):
I thought was interesting. And the article I read said it,
you know, we don't know whether it's positive or negative.
I think it means positive. Maybe the writer was passive aggressive.
I thought it was a pretty interesting quote though. Oh
yeah for sure, because I mean, again, you're training trees
to to be little freaks of nature basically. Yeah. And um,
like a lot of other works of art at the time, Um,

(09:16):
it starts out with like monks and Buddhists, and then
eventually it becomes like part of the rich elite and
then eventually works its way to the to the common folk. Right.
So by the I think the thirteenth fifteen, sixteenth century,
it was, it was, it was, it would become like

(09:37):
a pretty well established hobby in Japan. Um, I don't
I got the impression that wasn't necessarily thought of as
an art form until the West saw it for the
first time. So in the seventeenth century, Japan was getting
really tired of Westerners trying to convert them to Christianity
and um basically exploiting them in unfair trade practices. So

(09:58):
they said, you know what Westerners, get out, We are
isolating ourselves, were closing ourselves off the trade with the
West except for a few Dutch and Spaniards, and then
the Chinese did everybody else go away? And they stayed
like that for a couple hundred years. And um, I
believe it was Millard Fillmore who sent Matthew Perry Chandler
being over there with the squadron of navy freighters and

(10:22):
huge cannons and guns, saying you're gonna trade with us.
He said, could you guys be any cooler. You have
all kinds of cool stuff. That's my chandler. So Japan
opened up basically at the barrel of America's guns. Yeah,
we should do a show on that. We've talked about
it enough. It's really interesting the isolationist period, like what

(10:43):
was what went on there? And then uh, a lot
of bonds, a lot of goldfish tending. Remember Mr Burns
was famous quote those sandal wearing goldfish tenders. I don't
remember that. That's good though. But as far as coming
to the West, there are a couple of big fairs

(11:03):
where it kind of exploded, the Paris World Exhibition of
eighteen seventy eight, in the London Exhibition of nineteen o nine,
where you know, of course people in the West just
probably flipped for it. Yeah, because it's so cool. Yeah,
it is like, oh man, researching this, I I just
every time I would come across a new term for

(11:24):
like a style or something, I go look it up
and I end up spending half an hour just looking
at Bond's eye pictures. You know, it's really engrossing. Yeah.
I was gonna be like, all right, I'm doing this.
I definitely, but I'm gonna wait for what old age,
So like three or four years from now. Yeah, I
think I'm going to get into it. Yeah, I think
it's just for me. I've got too much going on

(11:46):
right now to do. But it's going to be a
great retirement past time for me. I could just I
could see myself really like spending days and days. I
can see it's caring for these little guys because I like,
oh yeah, and I like, uh like tiny things and miniatures. Oh,
you're gonna love Bond's eye. Yeah, like the little tiny

(12:07):
Tabasco bottles that you get in room service and stuff
like that. Plus you're crazy for it your doll houses
that you've built on my doll houses. Yeah, I just
I don't know. I think you read the doll Heinrich
Gibson play. Yeah, sure, great. Um, all right, well, I
guess we should talk about some of those styles and huh,
well you want to take a break first, Yeah, let's

(12:28):
do that. Okay, Okay, Josh, you mentioned styles, and I

(12:53):
did the same thing you did, Buddy. I went and
looked at pictures and I put little marks next to
my favorite ones, like your art to what I'm going
to try and emulate in the future. I'm very curious
if if we're going to do the same one. Okay,
you start so upright choken and it's the most formal
traditional style where it is basically emulates a strong, healthy,

(13:17):
upright growing tree. Yeah. I love that we take this
like ancient, amazing art form and the most formal style
we go right, Yeah, but I agree, didn't delight me. Uh.
And again, what you're doing is emulating nature, but you're
doing it in miniature and part of bonsai um is
using like tricks of the eye, forced perspective, that kind

(13:39):
of stuff. And um, the upright the choken style UM
does that by tapering the trunk so it's much wider
at the bottom than it is that that's the top,
to kind of give you the idea that you're looking
up towards a very tall tree. Yeah, and we'll sprinkle
in bits of the uh sort of philosophical art behind it.
But the idea is you you sort of imagine a

(14:03):
scene in your head and then you try and make
it look like that. Maybe it's something from your past,
maybe it's a great tree you saw one time on
a vacation, but just something that makes you feel good. Um.
You're usually not like, you know, let me just make
some crazy, weird looking thing because you know I'm drunk, right,
I'm gonna make the I'm gonna make that tree that
was next to the place where my friend got hit

(14:25):
and killed on his bike. No, it's all about harmony. Yes,
that would be the opposite of Bond's eye. Yes, that's right.
Uh So moving on to another style, which I did
not put a check martin next to. But it's okay,
um a yogi. I like this one. It's okay. It's
a little like the choke on. Um it's the informal upright, Okay,

(14:46):
so a little more style maybe. Yeah. So the choke
on is very formal, very straight. Um, the mayogi is
it's overall the shape is upright, but it can like
bend and twist to get to that point. See what
I'm saying. It's neat. Yeah, I think it's neat. I
wouldn't mind doing a moyogi at some point in the future,
but it definitely won't be the first one I try.

(15:07):
All right, it's it's down the list of it. Uh
the slanting shakan or or fukanagashi. Fukagashi. Yeah, nice, it's
that good. Um, these are pretty cool. I have to
say that has the leaning trunk at a forty five
degree angle and the branches follow the angle of the trunk. Yeah,

(15:28):
they're they're parallel to it, right, yes, basically parallel essentially,
so they're neat looking. Yeah, and that trunk is slanted, uh.
In in reference to the the pot, the lip the
lip of the pot, right, um? Right, yes, And we
should say we haven't said it, so we're talking mostly

(15:49):
about the trees and that's what gets the most attention.
But um, classically and at its heart, bonsai is a
it's a balance, it's a harmony between the plant and
the pot. Like when you're talking about it bonsai, the
pot is included in that, it's very part of the
sculpture itself. Almost Yeah, agreed. Uh. And also with that

(16:10):
slanting style. Um. Supposedly, even though I saw many examples
to the contrary, the first branch is supposed to go
opposite of the angle of the trunk for to provide balance. Right,
I think that's in the shotgun style, it goes the opposite. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, alright, alright, chuck,

(16:31):
next cascade pretty neat and you just lit up like
a Christmas tree, it's yours. So the semi casscade, the
han Ken guy is mine. That's the one I'm going
to try first. All right, well, go ahead and describe
it then. So basically, and you need a deeper pot.
So most pots for um uh bonsai are shallow. Um

(16:51):
this you need like a pretty deep pot forward because
the plant is basically mostly overhanging. It's outside and hanging
down from the pot. That's a full on cascade. And
these are meant to really emulate like a tree that's
just barely hanging on and like a rocky outcrop on
a mountain. Interesting. And so the cascade is full on,

(17:13):
like basically the whole plant has been below the lip
of the pot. The semi cascade is where right where
the there's a substantial amount of the plant is still
in the pot, but it's growing over and down the
side something that's right or really off to the side,
wind swept. This semi cascade, I think is another term

(17:37):
for it. Yeah, now I'm trying to apply psychology to
why that's your favorite. It's just just the look of it.
Just aesthetically speaking, I think it's it's great. Next up,
we have the literati or the bungen or bungeniing bunging guy. Yeah,
I think that's way better. Probably bujingi one of those.

(18:02):
So I think I would ask my wife, sure, you know,
we should just have you me in here with like
a ruler smacking knuckles. Nope. Um. This is the one
that's really uh, focuses on perspective. So the idea here
here is that you're you're looking uh from below to
a tree that is above, like if you're at the

(18:23):
base of a mountain looking up. Okay, then you tailor
the tree to make it look as if And we
should also mention that you should look at eye level
is traditionally where you're when you talk about perspective. You know,
if you're standing four ft above it, right, that's different.
You should look at bonsai eye level. Yeah, that's why
they're so frequently displayed at eye level. That's right. And

(18:43):
there's also it is probably worth mentioning here that there's
a definite front and a definite back to a bond's eye.
We'll get into that. Uh. This one is one of
my favorites. Broom. Yes, we're at the broom. So this
is this the one that you marked the hokey duchy yes, um,
and you might look it up people and say, huh interesting.

(19:05):
Not the most flashy tree. But there's something about it. Man.
It has this like really full kind of half dome
with a just a single trunk jutting up. Yeah, it's
just beautiful to me. It's like it takes the shape
of like an idealized like maple or oak tree. Yeah
you know, it reminded me of a like a grand oak. Yeah.

(19:26):
Well yeah, I wouldn't call you flashy. You've never been
known to where like I d bracelets or pinky rings
or I don't know what either one of those things are.
You know what a pinky ring is? Nope, yes you do.
I don't know what you're talking about. A pinky ring,
a man's pinky ring. I don't know what a man is. Okay,
well I'll tell you later. Uh So next up is

(19:48):
my absolute favorite by far, the landscape. It's when you
create your little miniature scene. It's like a shadow box,
which I used to love doing those when I was
a kid. My my oldest sister was into this, um
years and years ago. Yeah, she would make more like
English gardens kind of in miniature. I love that with

(20:10):
like you know, with like those gazing balls, she would
make like, well tiny one of those is the focal
point of the place. And yeah, so this is when
you have your little nature scene. You've got moss, you've
got little rocks, you may even have a water feature.
And it's just uh, I just ever, I don't know, man, ever,
since I was a kid. I love little things like that.
So is that the first one you're gonna try? Well,
I think I'd probably have to work up to that. Okay, Um,

(20:32):
you're not gonna just do water features right out of
the game, you know, but I might have built my
own fountain once. It's not that hard. You need to
pump nice um. And this actually China is still into
um yeah, into bonsai. But this is the stuff that
they practice called pinging. Yeah, very landscape oriented. Yeah. I
might even put a little like a camping scene, a

(20:53):
little fire ring. Oh, that'd be great with some little
little guys with their acoustic guitars. Right, and then Jason
Vorhees is standing off to the side just watching them.
Maybe um, root over or root on rock. This is
the one I thought was going to be your favorite. Yeah,
so what's the deal here? Um. You you could definitely
combine this one with something like cascade or wind sweat. Yeah.

(21:17):
It's where you train the roots of the um the
tree to grow around or on top of a rock.
It's pretty neat, so it looks like it is really
clinging to a mountain side. Yeah. And what they're trying
to do in a lot of these cases is give
the appearance of like an old tree something has been

(21:37):
around for many years, um, When in fact it may
be a tree that's like a year old, but it
looks like some ancient oak or something. Yeah. And we'll
talk about some of the techniques for doing that later,
but that is largely the It seems like the initial
point if you're you're trying to make it look like
an old tree, or you're creating a tree that you
intend to live for a few hundred years and get old,

(21:59):
you know. Yeah. And the oldest one they have in
DC like four years old. That's not even close. Yeah, Yeah,
I mean that one's cool. You want to talk about that.
So there's a white pine at the National Banzai and
Penji Museum in d C. And it's almost four hundred
years old. But also notably it survived a pretty big event,

(22:21):
the bombing of Urashima, and then it was given as
a gift from Japan to UM the US. Why I
don't know. I guess they were like, you're don't ever
do that again. Just take this thing to remind you,
I think twice. So there are many many older ones,
and that that was what you're saying. Yeah, there's one
in uh Museum in Spain. It's a ficus. It's like

(22:43):
a thousand years old. There's another one that's like a thousand.
There's a couple that are eight hundred years old. And
the ideas that many times these are passed within your family, correct, Yeah, yeah,
very frequently, they'll be handed down as heirlooms, right, UM.
Now some of the disparity between ages where they're like
that one doesn't really count. It may have been like
a thousand year old ficus that somebody found out in

(23:05):
the wild and collected and has been bond eying for
twenty years. So this one, I have the impression um
has been bonds eyed and in the same family for
like six or seven generations, so it's been like tended to.
So it may have been kind of old when it
was when it was collected, um, but it's been bonds
eyed for hundreds of years. Amazing. All right. To finish

(23:27):
up the last category, which I think is pretty cool,
multiform or ikada or SoCon or cabudachi, and that is
when you have the illusion that you have more than
one tree, but it's really just one tree. Yeah, that's
it's pretty cool. So it looks like, you know, it's
generally jutting out from the bottom obviously of the root

(23:49):
structure up and it looks like a couple of trees. Yeah,
but it's a single tree. Some people cheat and put
several trees in there. But well you can do that, right,
a little your own little forest, I guess. So it
isn't that then, really the landscape the psychi maybe? I think,
you know, what, are the bonsai police gonna come knocking
on your door? You don't want to mess with those guys,

(24:09):
No you don't, they'll ignore you. All right, Let's talk
a little bit about what kind of plants you can use,
because I did not know this. I thought there was
a special kind of tree that everybody used to make
a bonsai. Yeah, but in fact it's it could be

(24:30):
a tree that out in the wild is tall. I
had no idea. I thought they were little miniature trees.
It just grew up to be like a foot tall. Yeah, no,
a lot. Apparently that's like a common misconception. I saw
that during research a couple of times. Um. The whole
key is you are dwarfing a tree, and you're doing

(24:50):
that by um keeping it in a small container and
keeping its roots trimmed backed so that it comes to
basically go against its natural processes and just stay small
and miniature. Um. But yeah, basically any plant can be
bonds eyed. Crazy it is. And Um, what I didn't
realize is that most bonds eye is meant to be outdoors.

(25:14):
I thought it was strictly indoor. Yeah, and there are
indoor varieties, like you can take indoor plants or plants
that do well indoors and make them bonds eye, and
it's becoming more of a thing. But for the most part,
if you're doing especially something with like a pine or
a deciduous tree or a juniper, those are outdoor plants
and your your bonds eye is meant to stay outdoors,
except you know, if you bring it in and use

(25:35):
it as a centerpiece or something once in a while. Yeah,
And for those trees. Um, it makes a point in
here that they have a natural yearly cycle that will
be disrupted if you keep it indoors. So um, you
may have to overwinter it to a certain degree, but
you're also going to want to take these out in
the winter some r um. But it also says that

(25:56):
it's not like a grown tree that's covered mulch and
like super rooted, So you can't just leave it out
all winter, no, and if you do, you would want
to leave it in like a cold frame or a
greenhouse or something like that where it's gonna survive, or
you could also protect it with a bunch of mulch
too you leave it outside. But yeah, there's it does
follow a lot of its natural processes, right, So if

(26:19):
you're doing like a fruiting tree or a flowering tree, like,
as as long as it's healthy and happy, uh, it's
going to bear fruit. There's gonna be flowers. Um. Pretty cool. Yeah,
it's very cool. But you are simulating nature and that
it's the roots are being kept shallow and trimmed, So
you have to take that into consideration by protecting it

(26:39):
from cold and from making sure it has a lot
of water. Too. Yeah. Well we'll get into the specifics
of care here in a minute. Um, But as you said,
you can pretty much use any tree. Ideally, what you
want to use is something some sort of tree or
shrub that have small leaves or needles and that can
get super dense. So you just have sort of more, um,

(27:01):
more material to work with for your art form. Right.
How's that? I think it's wonderful. And it all starts
with roots, right, Yes, So when you're looking for a specimen,
you can just go to like your local nursery. Some
people grow stuff from seed. You can also take cuttings
um and grow them in like rooting hormone or something like. Man,

(27:21):
if you start from seed, that's like, that's meat, that's dedication.
And I will also say that if you start with
a kit that has a bonds I already sort of
shaped for you, that's fine. I'm not gonna knock it
too much because you might not have time and you
might still want to take care with it. That's good point.
But I would recommend like to get your full experience
and maybe start with a cutting that you kind of

(27:44):
grow as your own little baby, right, Or you can
go to like a nursery or something like that and
just say I would like to buy this plant and
I'm going to turn it into a Bond's eye. That
definitely counts as well. So, UM, a really good one
to start with that I found is juniper. Most junipers
they grow as groundcovers, so they stay fairly low to

(28:05):
the ground normally, so they do well being miniaturized. They're
also pretty hardy plants from what I understand, and um,
they grow really well in any temperate climate, relatively temperate climate.
So you go to a nursery and you you want
to kind of go already with the style in mind

(28:27):
that you're going to go with, whether it's broom or
whether it's wind swept or semi cascade or whatever, because
then you'll you'll be able to kind of narrow down
the plant that you want to buy because it's already
gonna you're almost seeing it in there, like you know
how sculptors say that they like look at a piece
of marble and they're just chipping away from what was
already in there all along. It's very similar with bondsai

(28:49):
as well. You go in, you find the plant that
kind of suits your needs a little bit and then yeah,
you dig down and you want to find the first
roots that come off of this, off of the trunk,
and that's where that's what's called the crown. Right, That's right.
And as long as those are pretty healthy looking and intact,

(29:10):
it's probably a pretty good bet that you can turn
that thing into a bonsai. That's right. And you should
remember too that Um, the more you want to alter
the tree, the probably younger and smaller it should be
to begin with. Um, because you can only do so much.
You know, you can't take a tree that's like stick
straight and be like, all right now, I want it
to cascade all the way back down. I yeah, you

(29:33):
might be able to, but it would take decades to
get it to grow like that. I would say you
have to be a bonsai master. Yeah, you would in
order to do that again like Mr Miyagi. But these
exposed roots, UM, it's going to give the appearance if
you want to have that age look like it's an
ancient tree. Maybe ancient trees usually have these great, big

(29:53):
roots that you see sort of on top of the ground.
So that's a neat thing you can do with your
bondsaye um. Plus, Also, what's great when you dig down
to the those top roots that form the crown, where
the trunk ends and the roots, the real roots begin,
there's gonna be plenty of fewer roots above that, and
you're actually gonna want to trim those away. But it
gives what was once a pretty short plant suddenly has

(30:15):
a trunk now, and you're like, oh, okay, wow, I
see where this is coming from. Its starting to take
shape just right out of the gate. Yeah, and what
you're doing, what I mean, we'll talk about pruning in
a bit, but how you're shaping this is with wire,
either with like aluminum or copper wiring that you can
leave on to bend the tree to your will up
to like a year. But you want to be careful

(30:36):
and not make it too tight because it can actually
cut into the tree, which you don't want at all,
and um, so you keep it on your wiring. And
the idea is that, again with harmony, you don't want
branches a mess of branches obscuring one another. You want
each branch to have have sort of its own personality exactly. Yeah,
So you want to talk about how to how to

(30:57):
start a bonds eye let? Okay, so you go in
you find your you find your plan and by the way, um,
well we're going to kind of give you a step
by step. But I found a really good website called
Bondsay for Beginners dot com um and they have a
really really good, really well written even though there's lots

(31:19):
of misspelled words, but just it's really understandable. Is for
the number four, that's like f O R E no
bonds eye four beginners. Wow, yeah, I don't remember if
it is the number four. I don't think it is. Okay,
just look it up and if it's somebody from New
Zealand writing, you found the right one. Um. But they

(31:39):
they they basically have a great step by step of
how to do it all. Right, So you want to
buy a tree. A good time of the year to
do this is to go in the spring when the
the growing cycle begins, uh, and go to your nursery
and uh. Like you said, you you're looking for whatever
tree that fits your mind's eye of what you've eventually want.

(32:01):
And it saysn't here to start with your scene and
work towards that. I think I would be more inclined
to sort of preform a little bit, you know, over
the years okay, which I'm sure is fine. You're gonna
be the bad boy of the bonds by world, aren't
You Never know what I'm gonna do next exhibitions wearing
like a motorcycle jacket possibly. Uh So the price is

(32:21):
gonna vary depending on what kind of tree you're getting. Um.
And of course I looked up the kits there. You
know they can be fifty to a couple hundred bucks
depending on the kind of tree and like how finished
looking it is, right or I mean like it can
you can go spend ten to twenty on like a say,
like a juniper. And then and there are plenty of

(32:42):
bonds eye tools that you can buy. The Internet will
be happy to take your money for that. But you
can also make do with other stuff like florists. Wire.
You can get the copper wire you need from probably
a hardware store piers. There's yeah, plyers. Uh. Scissors, scissors
smaller the better, sure, um because little first grade scissors. Um.

(33:04):
And then you're also gonna want like a root rake um,
which you can just bend a fork and bam you've
got a root rake boom, So you've got your plant
or where you're saying it's a juniper. You're gonna dig down.
You're going to um, you're gonna basically take it out,
put it on the table in front of you. You
want to spray bottle of water and take a shot

(33:24):
of saki. Right, get started traditionally exactly you go and
then you you get started. Um. So you take the
dirt off of the top layer all the way down
to the crown. And again there's a bunch of feet
of roots which you want to trim from the trunk itself.
And then you you take a look at the roots
like you you scraped the dirt away, and you really

(33:45):
look at the roots structure, and you say, I gotta
get rid of a lot of this. Yeah, and you
should already have your your pot at this point, by
the way, because this is the first step, is the
uh potting, right. And I've seen people, usually especially beginners,
make the mistake when they're first creating a bond's eye
that um, they go real small with the pot. You're

(34:07):
gonna go through a couple of pots in the first
few years. Um, So they say, don't be afraid to
use a big pot. As a matter of fact, you
should probably use a bigger pot. Than you think you
should for its first pots. Eventually, three or four years
down the road, you're going to finally come to that
that one pot that this thing stays in for the
rest of its life, and you're gonna repot it every
couple of years, but you're gonna repot it in the

(34:29):
same pot. Yeah, you're gonna be a flea market and
it's gonna just there's gonna be a golden light shine
around this one pot. And you're gonna say that things
twenty dollars and James Brown is gonna be like, dude,
you see the lie, and then you'll talk him down
to fourteen dollars and then up to seventeen, and then
you'll meet at the middle of fifteen. Nice and then
you've got your pot. That'll be a great day. Uh.

(34:52):
All right, So you're at the roots, I think. Yeah,
so when you trim the roots away. I was really
surprised by this. You want to trim about two thirds
of the roots present on your plant when you buy it. Yeah,
it even says in here that seems extreme, But don't fret, no, um,
and the roots you really want to go after, the
bigger ones, the more established ones. You want to leave
some at the top at that crown. But um, especially

(35:15):
if you're dealing with a tree and it has a
tap root, that root that goes like straight down, that's
actually not as much for watering as it is for stability,
and you don't need it in your tiny, little shallow pot.
So you want to get rid of roots like that. Yep,
you've got your pot. Um. You want to put a
little thin layer of gravel for drainage. Um. Yeah, and
that's another big thing. Your pot has to have drainage holes,

(35:38):
good ones. Yeah. Well you're the lawn watering expert. You
don't want a quarter quarter into of water over it
to standing. All right, So you've got your pot, you've
got your gravel down there. Um, you've trimmed your roots,
and you need your soil mixture. Yeah, this is a
big one. It's a big one. And there are different

(36:01):
um schools of thought on what kind of soil It
says in here, um equal parts uh, sand, pete, and loam. Yeah,
that's I guess that's like a general generic go to
bonds eyes. But you want soil specific to your tree,
Like if you have a juniper, that's gonna probably be
different soil than what like olive tree needs. And so

(36:22):
you just need to find out about the plant that
your bonds eyeing and find out what kind of soil
it likes, how much water it needs, what kind of
nutrients it takes, um, and what kind of sunlight it needs.
Especially that's right, it's a big one. So you stick
that sucker in there. You've got your trimmed roots, and
you want to spread them out really evenly. Um, you know,
towards the edges of the pot. Yeah, of the container right, um,

(36:44):
through like just all throughout the container. You want the
roots going down. Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned
you should run a wire up through the drainage hole
to support the tree. Initially, Yeah, this is a big one, um.
And this this wire, this is it's going to support
the tree. But also if you're gonna in the tree,
so you're doing a cascade or a semi cascade or
anything like that, exactly, you're gonna use that wire, um too.

(37:08):
You're gonna go train it around the trunk and then
bend the wire. It's gonna bend the poor plant with it,
and you're gonna leave it on there for like a
month or so at least, but you want to keep
a really close eye on it because the tree will
start to grow around it and it will be forever scarred.
And as far as Bond's eye is concerned, you're just
ruined your plants. So you want to keep a close

(37:30):
eye on it. Um, you want to make it tight,
but you want to make it tight enough so that
when you bend it, it's going to bend the tree
with it, but not so tight that it bites into
or damages the tree. And um, yeah, you want to
keep a really close eye on it to make sure
the tree doesn't grow. And then when it's done after
a month, maybe longer this article says up to a year,

(37:50):
but I didn't see that anywhere else. Um, you want
to clip clip it away like you're not gonna unwind
it or else you're probably gonna break your bonds up.
And hope cle your tree won't go and pop back
into place, and if it does, you just have to
redo it again. Patients, my friend, Patients, that's right, they
say in the article Patients is the best tool that
you can have in your arsenal. Um, So you get

(38:13):
the wire sticking up through the drainage hole. Now, that's right.
And um, you for as far as the soil you
want it to be, you want to tap it and
kind of you know, shake the pot around to remove
the air pockets firm and around the base of the tree.
But you don't want it so packed in that. You know,
the water's got to go through and drain all the
way through and out. Right. Well, you want well draining soil.

(38:34):
One thing I saw was three parts potting soil to
one part like miniature gravel basically, so the soil is
gonna drain. Well, Apparently you do want it kind of
packed because that that tree does not have stability with
its roots, so it's going to rely on the dirt
more than it normally would. Yeah, especially around the trunk right. Um.

(38:54):
And then but yeah, you want to shake it to
get the air pockets out for sure, that's right. Um.
A lot of people also puts additional gravel on top
to keep the dirt in place when it's water like that. Yeah,
and it looks nice to agreed. Uh. So you don't
want to do that and then go throw it out
in the full sun all day long in July. What

(39:14):
you want to do is start it in a shady
spot for about a week and let it get used
to be in shorter rooted and in a weird new container,
and let it accept the fact that it's. Um, I know,
I'm gonna be small. This is gonna hurt. I'm gonna
be small. I'm never gonna be a big big daddy.
And once it gets over that and accepts its fate, um,
and it says, you know what, I actually like this

(39:36):
because I'm gonna be a beautiful work of art and
get lots of care and attention. Now you can move
me into the sun a little bit at a time,
a couple of hours at a time, Yeah, sir or ma'am,
thank you master, and um since yes sin say and
then uh yeah, a couple of hours in the morning,
and then before you know it, you can have that
that bad boy out there, like weathering all kinds of weather,

(39:59):
weathering about normal weather like it normally would. Yeah. Um,
And your plants gonna tell you whether it's happy or
not happy. I think with buns I in particular, you're
gonna notice like every little change in your plant because
you're really concentrating on it and focusing on it, and
all the rest of your plants are gonna hate you. Yeah,
they're gonna be like, remember me, your spider plant is

(40:20):
gonna be like growing around your throat, just closing off
your airway. So watch out for your spider plant. Um.
And I should say one more thing took When you
first pot your plant, um, you the first watering. You
should basically take it in like a tray or a
pan or a bucket of water and submerge it to

(40:41):
the soil level and just let it sit there. Yeah,
this is what I've seen. Don't like plunk it in there.
Slowly submerge it in there, and that water is going
to make sure that every route gets into water and um,
it's going to fill in any air pockets that are
in there. So it's really going to basically solidify your
um soil. Pack it in and just get it ready.

(41:03):
Very nice, pretty neat, right, super neat. Should we take
a break. All right, We're gonna come back and talk
a little bit more about bonds I care and shaping,
which is where the money is. So check you got

(41:37):
your bonds eye yep you are. You've moved it back
onto the sunlight. It's basically accepted its fate as a
smaller version of itself. You've named it right right now? Yeah?
Uh Alan, okay, mine's Roy, So Allan and Roy. The
bonds eye twins are hanging out outside um when you

(42:00):
first pot it. You can also prepare the limbs to um,
where you're basically trimming the limbs back, one going. So
remember there's one in the front. There's a front and
the back to it right, yeah, which you should establish
and stick to right typically with bonds I. In traditional
bonds I, the first the first um limb is about

(42:21):
a third of the way up from the dirt, uh,
and it's going to jut out to the right. Second
one is going to jut out the opposite direction, but
it's not going to be even with the other one.
It's gonna be another about third of the way up.
You don't you don't ever, you rarely want um limbs
even with one another. It's called a bar that's unsightly exactly. Um.

(42:42):
So the next one huts out the opposite direction, and
then the third one is about another third the way up,
and that juts out towards the back, so it gives
the impression of distance of perspective and bowing and growing
out the back. Ye. Balance and harmony. UM. And you
do this by you can take that wire, different lighter wire,

(43:02):
depending on the size of the limb, and bend them
in the ways that you want. But more often than not,
you're going to be creating these illusions or this this
pattern by trimming your bond's eye. And like you said,
this is where the money is. This is where when
you think of bonds eye, this is what I think
of a little Japanese people like trimming the limbs off
of tiny plants. Yeah, and it's UM again. You're you're

(43:25):
striving to make it look like something larger that you
would find in nature. Sure, you could get super weird
and avant garde with your form and your shape, but
in general, traditionally, UM, you want it to take a
form that you would find out in the wild somewhere,
just on a smaller scale. But that that is the

(43:45):
that's the um effect of wind, of sun, of weird weather,
of poor soil, of just the weirder looking the tree
out in nature. Basically, the harder the heart of the
life it's had, and you're trying to recreate that, you're nurturing.
Pretty kind of counterintuitive, but if you just stop and

(44:05):
think about what you're looking at in nature that you're
trying to emulate. You'll probably figure out different ways to
do it. And if you haven't figured it out, somebody's
probably been doing it for a thousand years already. And
you can go get yourself a book or look on
the internet to find a technique. Yeah. So, like you said,
with the wind, like the wind the real tree and
real life that's on the mountaintop, the wind is trying

(44:27):
to kill it and it's leaning out over the edge
of the cliff like, oh man, my days are numbered. Um,
But you nurture that in your own bonds eye and
you emulate that, and it's, um, I don't know. I
like the idea of it for some reason. It's like
a tribute almost. It's Yeah, it's an homage to that
tree that's hanging on by a route. Yeah. When it

(44:48):
comes to light, Um, you want to rotate it around.
You don't want it getting the same it's the same
side exposure to sunlight every single day. You want to
you want to rotate it around. You want to keep
an eye out for bugs and and sex. Yeah, for sure.
And again you're paying attention to your bonds ay more
than your other plants, so you're gonna notice, like if
it suddenly has an insect infestation. Yeah, a little larva

(45:09):
uh what they called spittlebugs black or red dots of mites.
Uh says you can brush these away. Um. I imagine
you could smash them with a framing hammer if you wanted.
After you brush them off. Um, but a bit in
the Japanese bondsi tradition, you're you're probably brushing them away
a little paintbrush, right like you go and go hit

(45:31):
the spider plant. Hey, spiders are okay man, they eat
the little bugs for you. The spider plant, I mean
the spider plant said yeah, yeah, well you gotta watch
out for that thing is trying to kill you and
your whole family exactly. So that's where you need to
funnel your spittlebugs. Watering is another big one too. You
depending on how hot it is outside, you may end

(45:53):
up needing to water your bonds eye like two times
a day, which means if you're into bond's eye, you
probably don't leave your house very much. You most likely
want to bonds or water your bonds eye every day,
depending on again the plant, but most bonds I needs
watering every single day and twice on hot days. Yeah,
and what you don't want is, um, you know, as

(46:13):
you're paying attention to it, you don't want a soggy,
boggy base soil is that's a really bad sign. That
means you probably didn't put down enough gravel on the bottom,
or your soil mix doesn't have enough gravel or whatever
mixed in to make it drain quickly. That's right. Because
it's tough to over water a well draining potted plant
of any type, including bonds eye, you're probably gonna be

(46:36):
doing more pruning early on in the life of the
bonds I. And once it has that general shape that
you like, that's when you're doing uh, you know, just
the the subtle changes that probably mean a lot to you. Um.
But other friends that come over at you know, happy hour,
they'll just say, hey, nice tree, there's yeah, you gotta ice,

(47:00):
and they don't realize that makers broken. They didn't realize
all the subtle little you know, you might clip away one,
you know, a half of an inch of a branch.
To you that that makes it just perfect that other
people would probably not even notice. That's why it's your
bonds eye, that's right. Josh, That's why I was thinking
about it, Like like giving the gift of a bond's

(47:22):
eye to somebody that you've tended to for years and
years and years. That's that's a significant gift. Yeah, it's
like and here's my my daughter. Yeah, you know, right,
well not really, but you know what I mean. You
can marry this plant. You love it so much, why
don't you marry it. You're also going to keep up
with the fertilizer. Again, like this is so this is

(47:42):
almost such a generic overview in some places that I
feel bad even saying it. But just go find out
what the plant that you're raising needs normally and do that.
Do that. But again you have to bear in mind
that it's slightly different because you're you're keeping it in miniature.
It doesn't have its normal roots system. It needs more
water than usual, and um, it's probably because you're watering

(48:06):
it so much. The nutrients in the soil are gonna
leach out much more quickly. So you need to fertilize
it more than you would just if you were growing
it normally in a container. Right, So, since you're fertilizing
something more, usually the rule of thumb as you want
to you want to fertilize something weakly weekly, so w
E A k L Y weekly um and and that

(48:28):
way you're constantly replenishing the nutrients in the soil. But
you're not gonna like burn or scorch the roots with
like a chemical burn over feeding it. Yeah, and again
you pointed out earlier, but I think it bears in
mind repeating. The key is repotting and trimming those roots
every couple of years. And like you said, once you
find the pot at the flea market that you fell
in love with, you can keep it in that pot forever.

(48:50):
As long as it's you know, the one you want
to stay with them. You can do what you want,
but um or give it as a gift, or give
it as a gift. But as you as you keep
trim in these roots back, it's gonna stay that size.
If you forget about it. If you're a hoarder and
you and you and you're drunk and you pass out
for ten years, you're gonna wake up with a twelve

(49:11):
ft oak tree in your living room. That's the story
of Peppie van Winkle, Is that? Yeah? I guess that
is true, isn't it? Because yeah, you're basically once it
becomes established to the shape you want it, you're just
basically pruning it back here they're keeping it trimmed, and
then when you repotted every couple of years, like the
whole point is to keep the root system in check. Huh.

(49:33):
So if you didn't do that, yeah, it would just
probably it would die, is what it would do because
no water, there would be so many roots in a
pot that doesn't fit them. I probably look cool'd be
growing over it maybe, And that's some that's basic stuff
that we've been talking about. But there is a lot
of advanced things you can do too, and one of
those is like again training it to grow over rocks.

(49:55):
So like when you potted the bonds eye, you would
want a bonds eye with really long roots um so
that you could when you when you're potting it, you
would actually place it on a rock and then why
are the roots in place to let them start to
establish in the pots? Just things like that. There's something
called um gin, which is basically this is really neil.
But you saw it. Did you see a lot of

(50:16):
bonds I that had like dead wood exposed? Okay, So
gin is where at the top of the trunk or
at the ends of limbs, deadwood is exposed to just
really play up how old this thing is supposed to
be or actually is. Um there's something called shari, which
is deadwood on the trunk below, and then there's something
called sabamiki, and that's like you actually get in there

(50:39):
and peel away the the bark, drill into the trunk
and carve holes into it, carved like a gap into
it to create the illusion that it was scarred from
like a lightning strike. And you you've got to be
really careful doing that because you can very easily kill
your bonds eye. But if you do it right, it'll

(51:00):
row back and scar around it and you'll have a
pretty interesting looking tree. So that's not recommended for beginners.
I would not think so. I think you'd kill a
lot of plants doing that that way. So and and again,
people have been trying this stuff for a couple of
thousand years now, so there's a lot of different stuff
you can do in a lot of different resources out there. Nice, Yeah,

(51:20):
go to your local japan town and say teach me. Yeah,
And you know what, if the movie uh Karate Kid
Lost in Translation is true, then if you're a pretty
American girl, you can wander into any Japanese ceremony and
they will just accept you with open arms. Yeah that's
what they're known for. Yeah yeah, probably so right, Uh

(51:43):
to a certain degree, sure, and you're not a jerk?
Well yeah, like what does she walk into? Was hers
origami or was that bonsa? I don't know, I don't remember.
Was it a wedding? No, Scarlett Johansson walks out. There
were these Japanese women doing some either bonsai or origami
or something. They were like, well, you know, come on
in and let me show you our ancient ways. Yeah,

(52:03):
I don't remember that part. Yeah that was neat. I
like that movie a lot too, But wasn't isn't the
legend around it that Bill Murray's actually playing himself like
it's based on an experience Sofia Coppola had, Yeah, I
bet it's not too far off, and so like, uh
Giovanni Ribisi is um Spike Jones, Barly Joe Hansen is

(52:25):
um Sofia Coppola, um uh Anna Faris is Cameron Diaz
one dude is justin Timberlake, and so like this actually
supposedly happened, but then it's everyone says, well, who's Bill
Murray playing? Allegedly Bill Murray is playing himself. That makes sense.
I mean we'll never know what he whispers at the
end either, which I love. That was a great movie.
I forgot about that one. Make it Santry time. She's

(52:49):
a part of my D percent club. Sofia Coppla, what
is that? The directors who have made nothing but great movies.
I think I've only seen that in The Virgin Suicide.
It's a great movie. What else does she made? She
did Um the Blame Ring recently. I never thought really good. Really,
don't be turned off by the title, Yeah, because I

(53:09):
have been UM. And she did the one with Stephen Dorff. Oh,
I can't remember where he's the actor, just sort of
hold up in the Chateau Mormont before with his daughter
now before Sunrise, before Tomorrow. Nope. And she did the
one the let the meat Cake, Uh, Marie Antoinette movie

(53:30):
with Kirsten Dunns. It was fantastic. I never saw that
one either. Yeah, they're all great. I think she's a
top notch. I'll take him out. Uh. If you want
to know more about Bonsai or Sofia Coppola. You can
type those words in the search part house to works
dot com. And since I said that it's time for
listening to maut, Yes, I'm gonna call this uh tornado

(53:52):
miss already. That thing just came out today, man, And
you know what, I hope everyone's all right because there
are tornadoes like kind of all over the place. That yeah,
I heard Oklahoma's Kansas. Hey, guys, love the show. You
mentioned tornado miss episode that I bet you would get
an email from a civil engineer, and here I am.
I just wanted to share an interesting fact about designing

(54:13):
wind resistant buildings. I remember the day of the two
thousand eight downtown Atlanta tornado you mentioned because it was
actually the last day of classes at Georgia Tech before
I went out, before I went home to Florida for
spring break. Ironically, I just learned in one of my
classes that one reason most skyscrapers are not the same
basic shape from top to bottom is to alleviate pressure
from wind. In the same class of professor had mentioned

(54:34):
that one of the absolute worst structural designs where skyscraper
is a perfect cylinder, which is what our Peachtree plazas
that had the windows up for so long it's a cylinder.
The wind whips all around and ends up hitting the
entire face of the building as a giant wall of
forts rather than hitting the building at different places over time.
Not ideal for a class tube of the building. Anyway,

(54:56):
I thought you guys would find that interesting. You are
the best thing to come out of Athens in my
Georgia tech opinion. Oh wow, I see where that was going.
Keep up the good work. And that is from Scooter Shelbon.
Thanks a lot, Scooter, Scooter Selban. I don't know about
the best thing to come out of Athens. Uh, just
a couple of bands and beers and coffees and football

(55:20):
players as scooters take all right, Thank you, Scooter. If
you want to give us high praise like Scooter did,
we're always down with that. You can tweet to us
at s y esk podcast. You can post cool stuff
on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You
can find us on Instagram at s y sk podcast
for real. You can send us an email to Stuff

(55:41):
Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com. It's always join
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