A Tale of Two Ponderosas

 (With a nod to Charles Dickens.)

     When you first enter the exhibition hall where the Mid-America Bonsai Exhibition is held, your eye is guided straight through the room to a double tokonoma which holds the Best of Show and Best of Show Professional. This year was the first time in roughly 30 years of attending that I saw two trees of the same species in those places of honor. Two ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa), both yamadori.

The Best of Show and Best of Show Professional with Tim Cox

In the picture is Tim Cox, owner of the Best of Show tree. The Best of Show Professional belongs to Andy Smith of Golden Arrow Bonsai, bonsai professional and yamadori collector. Both trees were collected in 2017, and, I was told, in the same general area and just a week or two apart. Andy obtained his in the course of his regular collecting. Tim, with his son’s participation, collected his under Andy’s guidance. (I didn’t hear how old either tree is and didn’t think to ask.)

Besides both being ponderosas and fairly large, both are obviously mature trees, are obviously in good health, and have been in bonsai training for about the same amount of time. Both have excellent trunk taper, and I would call the basic style of each slanting, but with the apex coming back toward the base almost enough to qualify the tree as a moyogi (informal upright.)

Tim Cox's tree, Best of Show

Andy Smith's tree, Best of Show Professional

But notice also the many differences between them! Tim’s has a more serene look, with few breaks in the canopy’s silhouette and relatively little deadwood. Andy’s tree has a more dramatic, rugged appearance, with almost all the foliage to one side of the tree’s base and noticeably more deadwood - deadwood that hints strongly at adversities the tree has overcome. They even face opposite directions!

(By the way, what looks like Spanish moss hanging from Andy’s tree is not an example of his well-known taste for whimsy, but is another epiphytic moss which in fact grows on trees in the Black Hills.)

Notice also the differences in the pots. Tim Cox recounted to me the hours he spent on the phone with potter Ron Lang, working out details of his pot: the dimensions, the understated rim, the slight convexity of the walls, the vertical corner lines – everything! I think the time and thought that they both put in paid off: I have not often seen a finer pot, or one so suited to the tree it displays. The black slab for a stand works perfectly with the pot and the tree.

Follow me on a brief rabbit trail here. You may notice that Tim’s pot is glazed, with what I would call a "semi-muted" glaze. In traditional bonsai display, a conifer always goes in an unglazed pot - always. But I think this composition works anyway. I agree that an unglazed pot is usually best for a conifer: conifers are not loud, showy trees, and many glazes would call attention to the pot and away from the tree if used with the quiet colors of a conifer. But I personally have no quarrel with the use of muted glazes, in quiet colors such as green and blue, with coniferous bonsai. The only thing I would change in this composition would be to make the glaze a little more muted. - OK, end of rabbit trail.

Andy’s pot is unglazed, and also works excellently well with the tree it houses. The dark color of the clay body harmonizes with the tree’s color tones, and anchors the whole composition well. And the shape of the pot is right for this tree, right down to the spiky scalloping (sorry, I don’t know what else to call it) around the rim which mirrors the spikiness of the deadwood. And the colors and character of his stand work well with his tree, as Tim’s black slab works with his.

Two fine collected trees of the same species, with many similarities but almost even more differences. I haven’t seen earlier pictures of either tree, but we can do some “reverse extrapolation” in our mind’s eye and get some idea of what each tree looked like when it was collected. I’m sure they were quite different even then. What I ask you to take away is this: each artist studied his tree, respected and accepted the features and characteristics it had to offer, and then worked with those to produce a superb and show-winning bonsai.

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For the past year and more I have been doing the next best thing to taking bonsai classes: I have been a regular learner and participant in the weekly teaching events, of one sort or another, on Bonsai Mirai. Between learning more about bonsai every week and putting what I learn into practice on my trees, I have not had much time for writing about bonsai! (Some health issues have also interfered somewhat.) But I'm ready to try some writing again, along with everything else, and hope people find it worth their while to read it. - Steve Moore

:-)  :-)  :-)