Sometimes when I look at bonsai, I wonder what would happen if those trees weren't manipulated quite so much, if they were left in the wild to grow tall and deep and if humans didn't have such a need to tinker with what nature has given us. I have to concede, however, that these works-in-progress are very beautiful - clean, simple, balanced, interesting. And when you think about it, is shaping and training a juniper tree into artistic form more violent than suburban sprawl or the ubiquitous monoculture - now so obsolete - that comprises the almighty front lawn? There are far worse things perpetrated on plants and trees every day by well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning folks.

Jim Gillespie, VP of the Pennsylvania Bonsai Society, tells me that some who visit his group's exhibit consider what he does cruel and unnatural. (Are these people wearing fur coats? Do they like hot dogs and eat beef? Just wondering.) He responds that in nature, a pine tree might live 50 to 200 years under normal conditions. In a bonsai pot, which deliberately constrains root growth to keep the trees small, it could live up to 400 years. It's not unknown for them to live even longer.

This is a Shimpaku juniper. It's been pinched, pruned, fertilized and trained according to bonsai techniques for 47 years. It's growing around a dead, bleached-out trunk that's about 275 years old. To make this happen, a gouge was made in the back of the dead part and the live tree trunk was laid into it. As it grows - very slowly - the young tree expands into the groove and rolls over the edges of the dead tree, Jim explains. 

Bonsai is not necessarily fiction or deception, but the goal is to make trees look old or young when they aren't. The technique is part horticulture and part three-dimensional design and once it gets inside your head, it's hard to let go. Jim has about 200 bonsai trees on his 1 1/3 acre near Allentown; he's been studying and practicing this ancient Japanese art for 34 years, belongs to five clubs and two study groups. Now he has a business around it. "You sort of get lost in the structure of the tree," he said.

I hear ya, Jim. Ciao.