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What is the secret of bonsai?

Bonsai is the Japanese art of growing dwarf trees. Bonsai plants, with their tiny leaves and twisted trunks, can be centuries old. The secret to keeping these plants small is to deprive them of nutrients, to prune their fastest-growing shoots and buds, and to keep them in small pots (this stunts their root systems). The distinctive shape of bonsai trees is achieved through selective pruning, pinching out terminal buds, and wiring techniques. (Terminal buds are the buds that grow at the end of a branch or stem. It is from the terminal bud, formed the previous year, that the next year's growth emerges.)

Bonsai may have started during the Chou dynasty (900-250 B.C.) in China, when emperors made miniature gardens that were dwarf representations of the provincial lands that they ruled. The practice later spread to Japan.

Sources: Can Elephants Swim?, p. 27; Parker, Sybil P....

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