The wandering tiger bark
It's a real Fellowship of the Bonsai situation.
I need to tell you the most charming story that I found on a bonsai forum this week. Here’s the full thread if you want the unabridged version; I’ve tried to highlight what I think are the important parts.
On June 22, 2019, veteran Bonsai Nut forum member Cadillactaste starts a thread about a new acquisition: a chunky, wrinkly tiger bark ficus microcarpa. She’s over the moon. “Dang,” she writes, “that trunk base...is mesmerizing. I love the mature bark on this species...when it wrinkles...and I love the gnarly scars as they heal. It's better than a sumo...because it's mine. It has a history...survived the hurricane last year.”
“Sumo” refers to a squat tree with an exaggerated wide base. No bonsai style is quick, but training a tree into a sumo is an especially long term endeavor. Fortunately, Cadillactaste is familiar with this cultivar. She knows what she’s doing. “I am so drawn to this tree. Not for the canopy, but for the wrinkles...nubs, and scars.” Indeed the tree possesses all these qualities in abundance. “Looks like something you’d imagine in a fantasy novel,” replies cheap_walmart_art. “One of the most interesting ficus I’ve seen,” Colorado chimes in.
A month later: July 19. Cadillactaste posts an update. She’s removed branches and wired the ones left behind. With a ridged aerial root forming a second trunk, the tree looks like an elephant in repose. A week passes, then we meet the next character in our story. Forum member thams writes:
That's too funny! That tree was in my collection around 6 years ago. I originally purchased it from Martha Meehan up in MD. I think she grew the stock from a cutting for many many years before I happened across it. I donated it to Adam after his initial hospital stay to help him pay bills if he wanted to sell it. I guess it stayed in his collection since just recently. I was also drawn to the gnarly nature of the tree. It's cool to see it again!
Let’s unpack this.
Martha Meehan is the co-owner of Meehan’s Miniatures, a bonsai nursery in Maryland. thams lives in Roswell, Georgia. The Adam with medical issues is Adam Lavigne, a bonsai artist and author of my favorite bonsai blog. He resides in Florida, and is the one who sold the tree to Cadillactaste, who’s in Ohio. What a journey!
Let’s also take a moment to appreciate this gesture of care within the bonsai community: giving a tree to a friend in need, who can sell it for funds or nurture it to increase its value. A real mensch move, thams.
Long chains of custody are common in the bonsai world. People sell trees for cash, or because they have to move, or they’re unable to care for them anymore, or someone else loves the tree enough to make an offer. However these chains are rarely documented online. People post progressions of their own trees, not transactions.
In further replies, thams adds photos of the tree from when they had it. We get ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots of the tree from when thams, in their own words, “butchered it like an amateur,” removing most of its upper structure to push low lateral growth. Frankly, I’m with thams; I prefer the ‘before’ photo. Cadillactaste remains undaunted. She had been sending examples of trees exactly like the one in thams’ photos to Adam as a kind of mood board, to show what she was after. thams may regret their styling work, but it actually helped the tree to fulfill Cadillactaste’s vision.
Cadillactaste posts updates through 2019. She lives in a region with harsh winters, so the tree spends the rest of the year indoors under grow lights. We see new growth, big chops back, wiring new branches. Then, nothing. Cadillactaste is active elsewhere on the forum, but the thread goes dark through 2020.
On March 7, 2021, we get an update. “Going to place an order for more wire,” she begins, with a photo attached of the tree’s current state. It looks good. Then she explains how a family health issue kept her “in a shell” away from her trees and the bonsai community. She had been holding her breath as her brother prepared for a life-saving surgery and can finally exhale—and return her attention to the tiger bark. “Can't wait to set that apex in order and bring this tree together,” she writes at the end of the post.
It’s neat when a bonsai chain of custody suggests a continuous aesthetic trajectory, as if the tree had subtly influenced its custodians to train it according to Cadillactaste’s eventual design. Usually the chain of custody is more anarchic. That’s neat too. Either way, corny as it is, it’s the human connection between these chain links that are captured as changes in the tree. Shifting hieroglyphs telling a story.
Nobody owns a tree. They just hold onto it for a little while. So long as its metabolic needs are met, the tree is down for whatever. In exchange for the tree’s autonomy, we commit to meeting those needs, and wind up spoiling the plant with more nutrition and protection than it would ever get in the wild.
So who’s really domesticating who?
Tree reading
An interview with an artist whose medium is mycelium! Fascinating conversation and photos of living sculptures. [Mushroom Digest]
It’s a bonsai pot simulator! Dress-up paper dolls, for trees. [The Bonsai Project]