Wonder if there is any breeding going on in the bonsai community?

Disgruntled_ficus said:
Are you guys aware of any real efforts to to breed and select for qualities advantageous to bonsai with any species?
Click to expand...

Forgive the mind of a dirty old man, but I thought you meant members of the community breeding. The mind reels at the possibilities . . . .
 
Its not quite the same, but new cultivars sometimes become popular for bonsai, e.g. Ficus 'Too Little'. Its not breeding, but selective cultivation.
 
I was actually thinking of that today! ....well , yesterday now!

Amur+J.Maple

Oh yeah, I fell asleep to the River Monsters on the Amur River in Russia, Damn, it was a good one!

Sorce
 
You should get a gold star or something. Maybe one more thread will accomplish that. We're going to need to have another forum for these threads. There was that one thread from last year...I think it was titled "Help, my trunk is oozing!" I might contribute as a writer.
 
Its hard a hell to do and requires some intensely closed and controlled conditions. The way to "breed" trees is by waiting until the moment they flower, then using some qtip or other similar apparatus to pollinate the flower with the pollen of whatever tree your trying to cross it with. Basically you get to be a bee for a day, (making the buzzing sounds while doing this helps a lot) Then you cover the flower with a bag, cause we don't want no one elses sperm getting in there. Wait till your fruit is ready then harvest the seeds plant and continue.

It takes a long ass time. Theres a reason Mendel used peas for his studies in genetics. Some species take less than 3 months from seed to flower. Whereas most tree don't even come close to flowering until years after germination.

I would love to see someone take it on as lifer project though. To some extent the Japanese have already done this with the hundred maybe even thousand+ varieties of Acer Palmatum. but the majority of these were developed for landscaping type purposes.

Hope this helps.
 
bonsaiBlake said:
Its hard a hell to do and requires some intensely closed and controlled conditions. The way to "breed" trees is by waiting until the moment they flower, then using some qtip or other similar apparatus to pollinate the flower with the pollen of whatever tree your trying to cross it with. Basically you get to be a bee for a day, (making the buzzing sounds while doing this helps a lot) Then you cover the flower with a bag, cause we don't want no one elses sperm getting in there. Wait till your fruit is ready then harvest the seeds plant and continue.

It takes a long ass time. Theres a reason Mendel used peas for his studies in genetics. Some species take less than 3 months from seed to flower. Whereas most tree don't even come close to flowering until years after germination.

I would love to see someone take it on as lifer project though. To some extent the Japanese have already done this with the hundred maybe even thousand+ varieties of Acer Palmatum. but the majority of these were developed for landscaping type purposes.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Im glad to see someone else appreciates breeding. Im actually doing my PhD in plant breeding and genetics, though ill be working with commodity crops. Based on what I know of bonsai so far I think there could be progress made through breeding. It would be a fun project to set up in a greenhouse once im done with school.
 
Disgruntled_ficus said:
Im glad to see someone else appreciates breeding. Im actually doing my PhD in plant breeding and genetics, though ill be working with commodity crops. Based on what I know of bonsai so far I think there could be progress made through breeding. It would be a fun project to set up in a greenhouse once im done with school.
Click to expand...
Excellent. I actually have a home built lab in my garage and was dabbling in my own orchid breeding and propagating for a while. Like trees, they would take years to mature before you know what you got, and you need to raise hundreds or even thousands of seedlings to really see any variation and make informed selections about the next generation.
Commodity crops are selectively bred for specific traits consistently over generations - effectively 'artificial selection.' I think ornamental plants tend to be the subject of 'anomaly hunting'- someone notices a weird individual, and that is selectively propagated, but not further modified.
 
During a job shadow at a local nursery i came across an elm tree that was developed by the University of Wiscosnin, Madison that was resistant to dutch elms disease. They keep that one and a few others as stock plants for growing material for cuttings. Since you can't completely replicate certain traits by normal breeding. I've also seen certain trees in nature that seem to just naturally have smaller leaves than the rest. Specifically an american elm that grew in the yard at my old house. Not a single leaf on it was bigger than a 1.5 inches long. I might have to stop by that house at night to make some cuttings, haha.
 
sharkman154 said:
During a job shadow at a local nursery i came across an elm tree that was developed by the University of Wiscosnin, Madison that was resistant to dutch elms disease. They keep that one and a few others as stock plants for growing material for cuttings. Since you can't completely replicate certain traits by normal breeding. I've also seen certain trees in nature that seem to just naturally have smaller leaves than the rest. Specifically an american elm that grew in the yard at my old house. Not a single leaf on it was bigger than a 1.5 inches long. I might have to stop by that house at night to make some cuttings, haha.
Click to expand...

Besides the little "crack" elms with quarter inch leaves that made me lovulmus in the first place...

Every Elm like that I've seen around here, if you look close, has a really bad Elm Leaf Beatle infestation.

I had a squash fest last year with a couple on mine. Only a couple due to my legion of Jumping Spiders!

Sorce
 
Plants amendable to bonsai treatment have been set aside in Japan, China and Korea for a very long time. Westerners have also been noticing which cultivars of maple, pine, etc. work for bonsai and have been cloning and growing them from seed for decades. "Breeding" bonsai species is not really all that effective. It's unreliable and offspring of cultivars that have bonsai-specific characteristics, close internodes, tight backbudding, smaller leaves, aren't necessarily passed on to offspring. That instability is why most cultivars of Japanese maple, certain cultivars of pine, etc. are grafted.

Additionally, plants in the wild that show "bonsai" characteristics, like small leaves, etc., may only be reacting to local growing conditions. Smaller leaves on a tree in the woods can mean it is stressed by wet roots, etc. Exposed junipers on a ridge in Wyoming may have extremely dense backbudding, but that may be driven by relentless winds. Take both out of their situations and they revert back to "normal."
 
Last edited:
rockm said:
Plants amendable to bonsai treatment have been set aside in Japan, China and Korea for a very long time. Westerners have also been noticing which cultivars of maple, pine, etc. work for bonsai and have been cloning and growing them from seed for decades. "Breeding" bonsai species is not really all that effective. It's unreliable and offspring of cultivars that have bonsai-specific characteristics, close internodes, tight backbudding, smaller leaves, aren't necessarily passed on to offspring. That instability is why most cultivars of Japanese maple, certain cultivars of pine, etc. are grafted.

Additionally, plants in the wild that show "bonsai" characteristics, like small leaves, etc., may only be reacting to local growing conditions. Smaller leaves on a tree in the woods can mean it is stressed by wet roots, etc. Exposed junipers on a ridge in Wyoming may have extremely dense backbudding, but that may be driven by relentless winds. Take both out of their situations and they revert back to "normal."
Click to expand...

Yeah, its a matter of heritability that goes into the primary principles of plant breeding and quantitative genetics.

Phenotype = Genotype + Environment

Yield in commodity crops, for instance, isn't a very heritable trait though there are special reasons for that that aren't super relevant to bonsai at this point... The basic principle is to control your testing environment to replicate your target environment. This limits genotype by environment interaction and allows you to make desired genetic gain faster.

It would require making intelligent crosses and testing the desired traits in appropriate environments on population sizes appropriate to the heritability. The issues you bring up are what Ive spent years studying, just with a different context :)

edit:
Selective cultivation is related to breeding but many of the cultivars are developed for landscape purposes. It probably bring some progress slowly, indirectly.. but.. Without continued crossing and selection there is no continued genetic gain.
 
Last edited:
I dont know much about the grafting and cloning issues as they related to jmample and pine. I always that thought it was just faster and cheaper. If the jmaple and pine are unable to self pollinate or suffer from inbreeding depression then that does create a degree of instability. However, if they can self then the genetic component could be fixed.

There are different methods for breeding outcrossing and selfing species. Alfalfa for example is for purposes of this discussion is unable to self so each individual in a field has different genetics. In soybean every individual in a field is essentially identical genetically. Corn is grown as hybrids, etc.
 
Last edited:
Getting a tree small enough to train as bonsai, but big enough to reproduce. My eyes cross that the possibilities.

And now I have to transport my tree(s) to conventions so they can meet and greet, or will artifical pollinization do?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

pandacular
Building Wonder: Bonsai Treehouses by Dave Creek -Pacific Bonsai Museum - 2/11-12/21, 2025
Replies
1
Views
125
pandacular
pandacular
B
One root wonder
Replies
1
Views
566
Shibui
S
mattspinniken
I wonder why Thuja gets a bad rap....
5 6 7
Replies
120
Views
30K
mattspinniken
mattspinniken
Mike Corazzi
I have this ugly scar on JBP chop and wonder when
Replies
6
Views
1K
Mike Corazzi
Mike Corazzi
Anthony
Ever wonder how tall a Serissa s. can grow to ?
Replies
9
Views
1K
JoeR
JoeR
Back
Top Bottom