Ficus are probably the most common bonsai species. My first mallsai, or Home-Depot-sai, was a ficus, which I promptly killed. I recently visited Accent Plant Interior and got a funky ficus to work on! (twas $25)

Here he is, in all his beauty. The nursery owner told me that this tree had been seven or eight feet tall and then she chopped it to about two feet tall. She was surprised that I was interested in this stump instead of a more normal tree, but this was perfect for me. It was about how tall I would want a ficus to be without having to worry about chopping it myself. Cool cool. The only downside is that the trunk has… no taper. I will work on this.

So this guy came in a huge, huge pot. My first mission was to move it into a smaller pot, which was easier than I expected.

Then I checked out the root situation. I was so elated by what  I found.

Take a look at those beautiful, long roots! This will be such a great tree (in ten years). But bonsai has taught me patience. I knew I wanted to take advantage of these roots and make a beautiful nebari spread. My goal is to achieve something like this:

So how do you achieve something like this? A common technique is to place a tile under the roots so that the roots are forced to grow around the tile rather than downwards. However, I didn’t really have that choice. There was still a significant amount of tap root that I didn’t want to chop off, because most of the rest of the roots were stemming off of it somehow. That might kill the tree. So, I took a more creative approach.

I made a little copper circle to go around the tap root. I then wired the upper roots to the circle to straighten them out, so that they don’t overlap- crossing roots aren’t very attractive. I essentially just wanted to train the roots to straighten out and thicken up.

 

This was quite the process. I completely made up this technique, so we will see if it works. I wired all of the roots far lower than they would ever be exposed, because the wire might dig into the growing roots= and leave a scar.

So, with the knowledge that the roots were detangled and in training, I repotted the tree. Bye bye roots! They will grow faster in the soil than if I left them exposed.

Those two low branches are pretty funky. Why did I keep them? They are sacrifice branches, branches that you leave in order to fatten up the lower trunk (which is under soil now). Once I am happy with the girth of the tree, I’ll chop them off. I will let them grow freely and unrestricted. Now to work with the few branches I have.

(Ficus are notorious for having aerial roots, where roots form on the upper half of the tree and eventually reach the ground. Here are some little roots trying to grow. Here is was a ficus bonsai with aerial roots looks like:)

(I’m personally not a fan of this look, so all those little aerial stubs were chopped.

I still don’t know which side will be the front. So, I wired the branches to be a bit generic and just to add movement. I will most likely do either side that shows off that curve more.

This tree will be a very long term project. I need more branches, then ramification. I need to develop taper and nebari. But, the one thing I don’t have to develop is a thick trunk. Here’s to the next decade!