Taiwan Bonsai Exhibition

What a Weekend!

This weekend gone we discovered a local bonsai exhibition in the foyer of a sports college in the suburb of Tienmu.  We live a 10 minute scooter ride from this venue so we decided to spend some time here.  A friend, Jack Lin, was organising the event and his was the first face we saw as we walked in.  The exhibition is free but you are required to sign the attendance book.  Jack told us that over a thousand people visited these bonsai on the day we arrived.  And for good reason - they were excellent, some boasting an age of over 200 years!  

I hope you enjoy viewing some Taiwanese styled bonsai trees.  

These guys won 1st place for the smaller tree category.

A compact juniper - Juniperus chinensis - Shimpaku

Nice movement and ramification

Black pine

Juniperus chinensis - Shimpaku

I like the distinct levels and brilliant dead wood

Good use of space 

Hard to look away from this one!

A well developed deciduous tree.  Many years of watering and pruning have yielded results

A great trunk!  

Top to bottom

... this tree was standing proud

The full tree

Interesting trunk

This was one of my favorites.  It wasn't very big but I enjoyed looking at the large moving base and delicate tips

                                     
                                     

A white pine

                                      

This juniper doing its thing

A robust box wood tree

                                     

A gnarly old black pine with some character

An impressive large juniper with amazing trunk!

A raft style pine composition

More of those bigger guys - there were 3 - all high quality trees.  When I first began becoming interested in bonsai I didn't really like this style.  I preferred the more natural look - however, someone told me -"You have to appreciate the time and effort that has gone into shaping and ultimately creating a garden scrub into something like this."  I have a far greater appreciation of a tree like this I you realized how difficult it is to do this yourself.  This tree is perhaps over 150 years old.

It really is a work of living art

Some rocks on display - known as suiseki

The best suiseki are those that appear to be a large mountain range in the distance - this one qualifies  

At first glance this juniper looks to have a very strong trunk

Upon closer inspection you can see the thin trunk grown in a rock crevice!

Nice scale and taper

A very beautiful tree - my second favorite

Chinese elm

A close up of the branch structure

                                   

The apex

                                     

The dominate lower right hand branch

                               

Not the best photo but a powerful tree!

The lowest branch pad protrudes the furtherst distance from the trunk and then each progressive pad is pruned closer to the trunk.  This ensures that all pads receive adequate sunlight without becoming shaded over 

Strength

A wild and woolly one

Looking up into the canopy.  It could easily be a tree in your local park

A different angle 

Experienced hardship and is surviving

The next couple are of a famous Taiwanese forest planting - Chinese elm trees

This particular planting was photographed years ago and placed on a local stamp!

Lime sulphur was painted on parts of the trunk to create the feeling of the tree lightly covered in snow

A good example of a jin emerging from the apex of a juniper.  When pruning make sure you leave the cut branches long enough to include some jin in your junipers!

A mix of man made and earth made

Oh, and I also married Annie!  What a weekend...