Hong Kong Flower Show 香港花卉展 (13-Mar-2009)

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I went to the show today (Friday the 13th) with the intention to take lots of pictures of flowers. But I ended up taking lots of pictures of Pen Jing (盆景 Miniature Scene on a Pot, or commonly known in English by the Japanese name Bonsai.)

This was my first time ever visited the show, and I was not well prepared. To take good flower pictures, I probably should have had my tripod, and pick a more sunny day.

Many of the Pen Jing below are between 2 to 4 feet tall. About a handfull are about as tall as a grown up man. All the trees and plants are living plants, with many lived through the shaping process that took decades!

Click on the picture to see a large version.

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Perhaps two feet talk, this Pen Jing could have taken 20+ years to shape.

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Beauty in deformation?
The tree trunk is shaped by twisting and tighting and cutting.

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Some of the beauties of Pen Jing is in the nice root formation. I was told that the root formation like this one is done by planting the tree in a deep pot, allowed the roots to go deep. Then move the tree to a shallow Pen Jing pot, and explose part of the root. The roots would be shaped using the same techniques that shape the trunk.

Even with the roots explosed like this, the tree will live on for decades. Pen Jing is a live time project.

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I forgot how two tree trunks like these can grow side-by-side. They looked very nice anyway.

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A typical deco at the base of a Pen Jing. Many of the Pen Jing depict hermit like life of scholars, or rustic village scenes.

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Another important technique of Pen Jing. The tree trunk and branches are cut repeatedly to maintain the height, while allow the base of the trunk to grow thick. Sometimes the trunk will be cut open, without killing the tree, to allow or encourage deformed growth.

Deformation may not be the appripriate description but I will use the word until I found a better word. Very often this deformation is to highlight the resilient and strong life force of the tree.

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Another important technique, which requires lots of patient, is to place a nice looking rock "within" the tree, such that the tree will grow around or hugging the rock to form the desired shape.

Just imagine how many years or months are required to have the tree grew around a rock! For a large size real life example, see my pictures from the trip to Angok Wat. The process is essentially the same.

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One of my flavorites, and a larger one. This one shows another amazing technique of making the trees grow downward.

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Sort of matching the picture on the pot...