tropical bonsai plants

i am from india and i am practicing bonsai on tropical plants like adensonia digitata,baobab,bogounvellia,tamarind ficus etc...

please discuss about tropical plants....i am new so please halp me post pics..

post pictures of your trees please

gm.it.seacom wrote:i am new so please halp me post pics..

The best/easiest thing to do is click on Home then go on to the Testing board. At the top of the list you will see Jim Lewis's Sticky called Tutorial on Posting Pics. It's a brilliant outline of how to post your pics and even I understood it so it must be really easy to follow. Good luck.

BTW sometimes it does not work because of a problem with the site that hosts the pics. Just keep trying and dont give up. If it seems very bad, try Kev Bailey's alternative method - also to be found on the Testing board.

Just don't post any upside down please.

__gary

please feel free to comment on the pics..i am an engineering college student from india studying in the prefinal year and bonsai has been an intricate part of my life for the past few years.please tell me about technical faults as i am a learner and learning is a never ending process.please dont mind the background as i lack infrastructure being a student but i am sure that i can show you that india is not lagging in this art form .

Well, it looks like your off to a good start.

Just a couple of pointers:

First, when you post pics of your trees, you may want to clean up around the trunk and nebari. Get a soapy solution with water and a scrub brush and give it a good scrubbing. This will help your tree to pop out in a photograph so that we can better detemine what is happening aesthetically with the trees basic form.

Second, try defoliating your ficuses for us. This way we can better tell what we are looking at.

These are just two basic suggestions that will help you get more input from us here on the IBC. However, you have done pretty good so far, now its time to roll up your sleeves and take it to the next level.

Just my two cents!

Rob A.

There are several very knowledgeable experts here from the Philippines, Indonesia, Florida, and other tropical regions. The rest of us may chime in. My Operculicarya doesn't look anything like yours, except for the foliage. I will post a picture of it when the picture posting is back to normal.
One thing many beginners, and often experts from the tropics, are not always aware of, is that growing most tropicals in warm countries is not like growing them indoors in the North. If you read my articles in International Bonsai from 2007-2008, you may think I am writing from another planet.
Iris

With Ficus the secret is:
Lots of light
lots of tip pruning
and defoliating

With Ficus if you can pinch the tips after the first two or four leaves appear you will get more compact growth and smaller leaves.

Hi Gm,

Which part of India are you living?
Your trees are ao the right track. You just have tro improve on the twigs and apex. You followed the a,b,c of the Japanese bonsai. Later on you can improvise to the tropical trees style.

Budi

What kind of soil are you using? Next time you repot try to expose some of the nebari on your trees.

Hi GM,

If you want to grow ficus, please choose small leaves ficus, like Ficus neriifolia. For retusa family you can use microcarpa. You can also graft small leaves microcarpa on your local retusa. If you love benjamina, you can choose small leaves benjamina like philippinensis. In your picture, it looked that you have big leave virens. You can use thailand lipstic ficus grafted to your local virens.

Your tamarind is nice. But you have to train the roots. Try to encourage the side roots to grow, and you can cut off the tap root.

What kind of tree is the last picture?

Budi

the last tree is a small leaved mulberry tree.....,sir i admire u r views but to be honest all my trees are yamadori so i can do nothing about the variety.but i can defenitely reduce the size of the leaves..,all the plants respond very well to leaf pruning...about the root system...all the plants have good nebari but i have covered them with soil to thicken them..

hello dear GM,
its really nice to see your collection...being in india ,i know u r going very fast & in right direction than majority of us...i m also a student of b.tech final year..and learning abt bonsai from few years..our collection is also very similar ...i have some mulberries,ficus,tamarind(only 1)..and few others..
but i m not in that much good position at which u r ...because being in northern india ,i m not that much blessed with good climate ,soil and natural resorces as u r..... good work...keep it up!!! best of luck.....
yadibrar.

Hi GM,

You've got some really nice trees there. Love the Tamarinds.

Cheers