As with most things in life, when it comes to growing these beautiful little trees, there are various different bonsai tree types to take into account.
Growing this ancient and opulent type of tree takes some careful planning, maintenance, and you also have to have a considerable amount of knowledge too, to enable you to get the conditions and maintenance right for your particular type of bonsai tree.
If you need a little visual help in growing and maintaining a bonsai tree, check out Balcony Bonsai, where you’ll find countless hints, tips and videos, as well as a few things you may never have realized about this wonderful species!
There are two main types of bonsai tree, namely outdoor and indoor.
Indoor bonsai trees are best for beginners, because they don’t require as much upkeep as an outdoor bonsai tree, and they also only need a little more than a regular house plant. For this reason, this is a good place to start. The best types of indoor bonsai tree are tropical types or subtropical. Pick from ficus species (the most popular), serissa, sago palms, baby jade, and elm.
Just because these bonsai tree types all live indoors, doesn’t mean that you look after them all the same so again, check out the individual instructions for the type of bonsai tree you opt for.
Outdoor bonsai trees typically require a lot more care and attention than indoor types, and they need to be sheltered from bright sunlight, and also from extreme winter weather – not easy!
The main types of outdoor trees which are suitable for bonsai growing include pine, azaleas, and juniper, as well as some maple, elm, larch, and even apple trees, but these will need to be trained a little more rigorously than the first three types.
We mentioned the main and most popular types, namely the fig tree and the juniper bonsai. These are quite easy to train and prune, but if you want to give them a bespoke shape, you will need to keep them in check with maintenance pruning quite often, and then the occasional bout of structural pruning. Both types literally do what the name would suggest – maintaining the tree, and then changing the shape, just in case a branch decides to grow in a direction you don’t want it to.
Within the fig tree species there are several types to choose from, in fact, there are between 800 – 2000! These are ideal for living indoors as they hail from tropical areas of the world, and therefore are used to high humidity and high temperatures.
These conditions are easy to replicate indoors, provided you keep your bonsai somewhere that has constant temperatures, rather than sudden drops. It’s also a good idea to keep it in direct sunlight, but not throughout the entire day.
On the other hand, the juniper bonsai is from the cypress group and has around 50-70 different species within the family. These work wonderfully well as bonsai trees because they are also from warm countries, but they also produce the same kind of flowers and branches that you want to replicate for a bonsai design.
To give you an entire list of the different types of bonsai tree is impossible, there are countless. You need to decide whether you are going to grow from seed or from a cutting.
If you go for growth from seeds, this is going to take around three years to reach maturity, whereas if you go for a cutting, this is going to be around the two-year mark.
Either way, whatever type of tree you opt towards, you need to check out individual instructions, just as you would with planting house plants.
Here are some of the types of bonsai that are touched upon here at Bonsai Oasis
Azalea
Japanese Maple
Pine
Willow
Cherry
Fukien Tea
Boxwood
Wisteria
Jade
Many people falsely assume that the bonsai tree totally hails from Japan, but that’s not the case; this historic tree actually found its roots (literally) in China, some 2000 years ago. The practice was adapted to what we know today by the Japanese, and it is now used in many botanical gardens to help create a sense of peace and quiet, serenity, and calm.
If you can adopt this into your living space, you will be able to reap the benefits of this beautiful tree, with a little care, attention, effort, and maintenance.
Here are the 5 basic bonsai styles that can be achieved when growing a bonsai. Some types of bonsai are suited better to a particular style than others.
[fivecol_one]Formal Upright – “chokkan”[/fivecol_one][fivecol_one]Informal upright – “moyogi”[/fivecol_one][fivecol_one]Slanting – “shakan”[/fivecol_one][fivecol_one]Cascade – “kengai”[/fivecol_one][fivecol_one_last]Semi-cascade – “han-kengai”[/fivecol_one_last]
Just remember that patience is key with this hobby.
Many people take on bonsai tree cultivation as a hobby, and it will certainly mean you need to keep on top of the cultivation side of things. Is it worth it? Most definitely, yes!