You may not know bonsai trees have a classification based on the dimension.    It isn’t an absolute rule and the measure of the bonsai isn’t really important. No one should grow his bonsai thinking of the category it belongs to, yet it is important he has those basic notions that complete his bonsai culture.

Japanese people divided bonsai into groups giving them a name. A precise classification doesn’t exist, every bonsai master varies it a little. This one I present here is generic, but consider a tolerance of 5-6 cm (2-3 inches).

SHITO or KESHITSUBU: these are those little bonsai measuring around two or three centimeters (one or two inches), they are really difficult to cultivate and should be approached only by experienced people.
MAME: mame are little bonsai measuring no more than 10 cm (4 inches).
KOMONO: up to 15 cm (6 inches), these bonsai are still hard to manage as little parts may be tricky to handle.
KATADE-MOKI: those from 20 cm to 40 cm (8-16 inches) are called “one hand bonsai” because it’s the last category that can be handled using just one hand. These one are the most diffuse.
CHUMONO: “two hand bonsai” start from 40 cm up to 90 cm (16-35 inches) and are the most appreciated because their proportions are well balanced. In this category there are wonderful bonsai, the masterpiece of this art, the most admired and loved specimens.
OMONO: the last group presented here is the one up to 120 cm (45 inches). These are spectacular, but maybe they appear more like “normal” trees than bonsai. In this category there are breathtaking specimens for sure but this isn’t the group bonsai are famous for.

Bonsai art’s charm lets us consider our plants as an ornament for our houses, but we usually forget the bonsai is a living creature that needs peculiar environments to live in.

It’s a plant before a work of art, and we must take this concept into account when we approach the bonsai art.   Whether a bonsai should be put outdoor or indoor it’s easy to say: no trees were born to live indoor, and bonsai is no exception.   However not every place in the world has the right climate for every plant.    For example a ficus bonsai cannot live in the outdoor in Norway during winter and a red-deal will suffer and die if cultivated in Nairobi.    So where to place a bonsai depends on where you live.
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As general rule you can consider as outdoor species those native of your place (or a place with a comparable climate) and indoor all the tropical species.  This is a superficial distinction and, whether a bonsai is an outdoor or indoor one, should be analyzed carefully.   In every case, all bonsai, even those considered indoor, should be set outdoor during the summer. This is because our houses are lightless and heating systems create a dry environment, very stressful for the plant.

Those bonsai native of tropical places are naturally adapted to a continuous vegetation growth, at the opposite, those native of temperate climate stop vegetation during fall and start again when spring comes.  When we adapt a tropical species to live in a temperate climate, we have to force it to have a rest during the winter, when it stays indoor. This is because growth during indoor periods will produce internodes too ample, leafs too big and weak, as well as poor lignifications, all due to the lack of light among other things.

To achieve this cycle, we have to force a strong vegetation when the bonsai is outdoor so it will need a lignifications rest when we’ll put it indoor.  Another school of thought says even when indoor, the bonsai should have a vegetation growth. This is because its natural cycle is like that. I don’t recommend this practice for the reasons I listed before, unless you have a greenhouse reproducing the tropical climate with the right temperature and humidity tax.

More often than not, the approach to bonsai art comes with a present.   A friend, a relative or a partner gives a new little tree in a short pot and he/she can’t tell us how to handle it.
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Those bonsai trees are set on a piece of furniture or next to a window and normally die in a couple of months.   Here comes the misconception that bonsai trees die after a short time.

The truth is a bonsai can live among hundreds of years (there are specimens of 1000 years and more), so you are not excused if you let your bonsai die.   But what to do with that strange thing?
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This is a brief kick start guide to help you in the first months with your bonsai:
Establish what species it is: first thing first you have to know what species your bonsai tree belongs to.   It is important because every species has different needs.  This may be a hard task, there are hundreds of species and each can have a lot of varieties and cultuvar.
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To start you don’t need to know the exact variety or cultuvar, you just need to know the general name of the species: it could be a maple, an elm or it could be a pine or a juniper.  
Arborday.org has a guide on the trees classification that can help you.   Also Wikipedia has a classification list.
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Set your bonsai tree outdoor: unless your bonsai belongs to a species native of tropical regions, you have to put it outdoor (of course if you live in a tropical place you can set your tropical bonsai outdoor).   A bonsai cannot survive indoor due to a handful of reasons, if you assume your bonsai is an ornament you are wrong.  Period.
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If you identify the species, you can know the precise spot where to set it.  Usually conifers should go in full-sun, the other species should be set in mid-shadow or even shadow. This is a really rough distinction and there are a lot of exceptions, a good cultivation sheet can help you a lot.
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Learn how to water it: watering is a crucial task and one of the most difficult of bonsai cultivation.   Every species needs different quantities of water, and you should understand the needs of your own bonsai tree.   The bonsai lives in a small pot, there’s a relatively small quantity of soil in it and the tree can certainly suffer dryness and temperature excursions.
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As a general rule, if it is summer you have to water your bonsai every evening.   If you water it in the morning the soil will dry in no time and the tree will suffer.   If you water it in the evening it’ll have all the time it needs to adsorb water and nutriments and, even if the next day the soil will dry, the bonsai will not suffer.
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During spring and fall you have to diminish watering, just wait until the surface of the soil starts to dry out and only then water. It is easy to over-water your bonsai tree, so follow the rule above and you should be ok.
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During winter the bonsai wants little water, just keep the soil humid, not wet, and water when it begins to dry.   There are two watering methods: the first is giving your tree a shower and continue until the water exits from the drainage holes; the second is to immerse the pot in a can of water and let the soil adsorb.   In both cases remember to bathe the foliage too (never if the sun still hits).
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Fertilize your bonsai: fertilizing is the most underrated task by the novice.   It is really important to fertilize the bonsai because the soil in the pot will easily loose it’s nutriments for the tree.   The quantity of soil is limited and it is an isolated environment so it’s our duty to provide nutriments.    If your matter si if water is sufficient, the answer is no.     Can you live just drinking water?  No.   For your bonsai is the same thing.
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Until you become an expert, a balanced fertilizer (10:10:10) will do it’s work. You don’t have to acquire a bonsai specific fertilizer, the bonsai has the same physiology of all the vegetables, every fertilizer will do.   Remember just to dilute it more than the recommendations say or you’ll risk to burn your bonsai.
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A simple and good solution would be to use the hanagokoro, a Japanese organic fertilizer, very strong, easy and safe to use as it is almost impossible to overfeed.   You should fertilize during spring, when the vegetation begins, until December (If you are downunder), then stop in the hottest period.   Restart in the second half of March until May.
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Get another bonsai: only action will allow you to gain the sufficient experience to manage a bonsai.    Keep collecting bonsai and make your own, with try and errors you will become an expert.   Needless to say it is a great satisfaction to produce your own bonsai and a lovely feeling to watch your bonsai garden growing.
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You may have noticed I have omitted such tasks as pruning, wiring, jin, shari and so on.    This is a primer, a kick start guide, born just to help you keeping alive your bonsai.

Defining what is a bonsai isn’t easy, but we can resume it in the “perfect balance between the tree, it’s form and the pot hosting it”.    If you don’t learn how to take care of your tree, and limit your experience to this primer, your bonsai will survive but it’ll loose its “bonsai title” in a couple of years or less.

If you are serious with bonsai art, you want to study. You can buy books - I will soon post reviews - or read some good online resource - in the sidebar there are a phew -.
Of course keep reading this blog, I will post a lot of things about bonsai.

If you think this list isn’t complete (keep in mind it’s a survival guide), feel free to add your points.

They are the miniature of a bonsai tree, shorter than 15 cm (6 inches), they easily lay on the palm of your hand: they are mame bonsai.

Mame are more difficult to cultivate as their minute dimensions make them very fragile, yet, if well treated, they can have an exceptional long life.

Cultivating mame rises a lot of troubles, think of their little dimension and what will happen when the wind batters them; think of how little is the soil in their pot and how fast it can dry; think of how big are your fingers when touching its foliage, like an elephant in a christallery.
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Mame’s water needs are exceptionally high, you may have to water them two times a day during spring and even more when the hot summer comes. In addition you have to take in great care the position where you set them because they can suffer dryness under the sun, but will weaken in the shadow (clearly it depends on the species).

Educating them with the wire usually isn’t the best choice, their little branches will easily break during the modelling. Better to educate just pruning them, and wire only if it’s indispensable.

Starting material useful to create a mame is the easiest to find. You can start using a couple of years old seedling or piping. Very important is the species to grow because mame should have small leaves or it will loose its grace.

The golden rule with bonsai is patience, with mame this rule is even more appropriate. To grow a well balanced and beautiful mame you need not less than eight or ten years. This is because it requires a lot of time to become stronger, to develop its trunk and to gain balance with its pot. You cannot start a mame with an already grown plant, you have to necessarily grow a seedling or a piping, but the satisfaction to hold in the palm of your hand a little mame is incommensurable.

Why don’t you get one of them?

Penjing is nominally split into three types ‘Tree Penjing’, ‘Landscape Penjing’ and ‘Water and Land Penjing’. All these categories overlap in practice.

Chinese Penjing does not have clearly defined styles (Formal Upright, Informal Upright, Slanting, etc.) like Japanese Bonsai, although they do use these categories as points of reference.

Historically, style in Penjing was more to do with regional style, with different areas of China specialising in certain species of tree, certain techniques (clip and grow, bending with rope, bending with wire, etc.) or certain visual ideas (such as trees shaped to represent or suggest dragons).
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There are other differences too. In Japanese Bonsai, crossed or tangles roots are usually seen as a real faux pas, whereas in Penjing heavily knotted roots are something which suggests character and age in a tree. Also, in Penjing there is less emphasis on technical perfection (often pruning scars are not hidden). In Penjing, little pagodas and men with fishing rods adorning the scene are seen as a good thing (adding to the beauty), whereas in Bonsai they are just thought of as tacky (distracting you from the tree). The same could be said about pot decoration.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the intention of what is being created. In Bonsai, often and image of a tree in nature in the Platonic sense (or an image of an idealised tree) is being created, whereas in Penjing, a realistic representation of a tree (in the Platonic sense) is not always the aim, although it may be the aim to create a realistic representation on an individual tree, real or imagined. Also, the intended scope of Bonsai and Penjing differ. Bonsai compositions consist of a single tree or a group of trees, whereas Penjing often incorporate other aspects (such as rocks and water) to create a miniature landscape, sometimes these landscapes do not even contain a tree.

Traditionally, Penjing, landscape painting and poetry are and were intimately linked. The Chinese intelligentsia believed that by inderstanding and experiencing nature, they would advance their spiritual development, and bringing nature closer to home in the form of paintings, poetry and Penjing would also aid this development.

Like Japanese haiku poetry, Chinese poetry relied on a very limited amount of content to portray a vast scene in the mind of the listener. Likewise, Chinese landscape painting used a minimal amount of actual brush strokes to portray an impression of a scene. As well as mimicking the visual style of Chinese landscape painting, Penjing also uses a similar method to portray the whole of a scene or idea using a limited number of elements. This is most striking in the ‘literati’ style, which later found its way to Japan. Significantly, it is common for Penjing compositions to be given titles, and in China, they are often regarded as a form of three dimensional landscape painting.

To me, the purpose of Penjing seems more concerned with creating a subtle and metaphorical tale, using trees and other landscape elements as its medium. So the tree or trees become a means to that end, rather than an end in themselves as is more the case with Japanese bonsai.

Some Penjing masters refuse to use wire to shape trees, preferring clip and grow techniques because they think it requires more skill and patience. They see shaping with wire as too easy. Historically, copper wire was very scarce and expensive in China and alternatives were used, such as bending with iron wire or string. But also, ‘clip and grow’ techniques were relied upon for basic shaping and development far more in China than in Japan.

No aesthetic rule should be strictly followed, yet rules are there as a guideline for the achievement of that perfect look bonsai trees have.

The aesthetic canon of bonsai art has been gradually developed during centuries of trial and error by fine masters. Those rules are suggested by practical aspects of the bonsai cultivation.

The primary meaning of the bonsai tree is imitating it’s counterpart living in nature, achieving that well balanced look of a “normal” dimension tree.   However, on a little bonsai, there’s not room for all of the branches of a big tree, so they have to be screened.
You should leave on the tree just those fundamental branches required to achieve the aesthetic balance.   The branches position is fundamental too, and, even if every bonsai style has its characteristics, some overall rule can be listed.

The first branch is bigger and is positioned at about 1/3 of the bonsai height. The other branches are smaller as they reach the top of the tree, alternating the side of the trunk from where they grow. Those branches have to grow about 120° one from the other, having their center in the trunk. No branch should point toward the viewer nor directly backward where it is invisible. The whole foliage should roughly draw a scalene triangle.

The trunk has to be conical; one of the worst mistakes a bonsai cultivator can make is growing a cylindrical trunk.
When we look at big trees we have the feeling their tops dominate us. This should happen when looking at a bonsai too; the trunk of the bonsai should bend a little, as if it gently bows towards the observer.

The pot is always underrated by the beginner, but it is really important for the balance of the bonsai. The pot is part of the bonsai itself, no plant can be called bonsai if it hasn’t a good balance with its pot.
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The pot should be of the right colour, contrasting or blending with the bonsai tree.   A maple, for example, can have a glossy light blue pot, contrasting the red foliage during fall; a conifer, such as a pine, should have a matte brown pot exalting its noble bearing.
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The shape of the pot is important, and it should complement the foliage: a rounded foliage needs an oval pot and a triangular foliage a rectangular pot.
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The size of the bonsai pot should be chosen carefully, too often I see little bonsai in large pots, and this destroys the balance.   The right pot should blend in the composition. As a general rule the width of the pot is 2/3 of the bonsai height and its height equals the base of the trunk.

All of those rules are just indicative, what makes a great bonsai is the artistic sensibility of the human who cultivates it.   None of these rules should be severely followed, every rule is meant to be broken and experimentation is allowed in bonsai cultivation.  On the contrary you don’t have to completely change those norms.
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It is just like aesthetic canons in sculpture or painting: there are the rules, invisible to the viewer, followed even by great masters; those rules sometimes are broken in a clever way and that transforms a good piece of art in a masterpiece.

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The Hori-Hori Digging Tool was originally designed for excavating aged stock high in the mountains of Japan. This is an indispensable tool for digging - in the garden ir cuts and scrapes weeds, roots and vegetables. It is also a great tool for rock hounds!

Cypress Bonsai Tree Sculpture by Bonnie Belt