Browsing the bonsai

This past Saturday I went down to the Wailoa center to see a bonsai exhibition which I heard about from a friend (and whom I met there to see it with). It proved a rather eye-opening experience. My impression of bonsai, prior to this, was that it always involved conifers or other evergreen trees, but this exhibition included plenty of bonsai made with broad-leafed plants, including some that I found very creative. For instance, here's a three-year-old bonsai made from an oregano bush:

Having grown oregano in my Farmstand I was very interested in this one, since it seems to be a slightly different variety with smaller leaves, and perhaps more inclined to grow into a woody herb. Another surprise was this bonsai citrus tree, complete with (quite a lot of!) fruit:

This one definitely had me thinking about what other fruit trees might be able to be cultivated indoors as bonsai. When I originally got my Farmstand I had thought a bit about the possibility of growing an indoor fruit tree or two, but had given up the idea on the basis that it would probably require an inconveniently-large pot, and that most fruit trees grow larger than the average room height. But these bonsai trees grow out of what I would cordially characterize as absurdly small pots, and bonsai is all about keeping trees artificially small, so perhaps it's not as impractical as I had assumed. I might need to look into this some more.

Of course, there were plenty of more traditional bonsai there too, including a lot of evergreens. I didn't take too many photos of those (though there were many pleasing and impressive ones), but this larger-than-average twenty-year-old black pine stuck out to me:

And finally, even older than that was this Green Island banyan bonsai, at a venerable twenty-five years old:

I'd show a rather beautiful bougainvillea bonsai in flower, but unfortunately my only photo of it came out blurry. All in all the exhibition only took about three quarters of an hour to see, but it was a fun experience all the same, and definitely opened my eyes to what can be done with bonsai. I don't know that it'll become a new hobby or anything, but I can appreciate it more now (though I wish there were some explanation somewhere of what all the many style names mean). I think it's a yearly thing, so I'll have to see if I can get wind of it again next year and see it again. A hui hou!