| "Elfin Trees"
by Cornelia E. Bedford (1900):
In the endless variety of curious things Japanese,
their dwarf trees have aroused much interest. The Japanese have a
great love for gardening, and, just as they do everything – even to the
arrangement of flowers – carry on this work as a thoughtful, harmonious
art.
Along with their effort to make
some flowering plants, noticeably the lotus, of extraordinary size, they
have a wonderful way of stunting trees, so that they seem almost toy baby
trees. This takes many, many years, sometimes hundreds, to accomplish
fully the design of the one who starts the training of a dwarf tree.
He will conceive some fanciful idea – like a waterfall beating on a tree
at its base, or a tree growing down and beautifying with green the surface
of a cliff – something unusual or freakish that he has noticed in the actual
country; sometimes he will fancy a banner outstretched in the wind, or
an eagle sailing in the sky; then he will take a tree, a new tree, and
try to twist and train its living substance to grow into a representation
of the design. At his death the design may not be at all developed;
but the work is handed down to his son, to his grandson next, and on, many
generations, with this traditional teaching, having their share in the
development of a tree twelve, eighteen, or twenty-four inches high.
It can readily be seen why a single specimen may cost several hundred dollars.
This development of design is frequently effected
by exposing the root, which can be done only at the rate of a quarter of
an inch a year. In the trees having this root exposure, part of the
age may be found by measuring the root.
Grafting is an important feature
of Japanese trees. As many as eight varieties of maple have been
seen in one of these dwarfs.
To speak of some actual examples
of these miniature trees, one delightfully poetical little larch has grown
around in a loop so as to represent a moon with fleecy clouds drifting
over its edge.
Another is a pine, whose roots
are exposed and grow higher than the trunk. They bend over before
the trunk begins; and it – contrary to the laws of pines – is made to grow
down instead of up, and gnarled instead of straight.
Neagari is the term given to a
plant with exposed roots. Another of this kind, a pine also, simulates
an arch. A rock is fitted in another and the roots trained to fasten
themselves to it. One tree of the rather familiar variety, the Thuya
obtusa, with roots exposed and trunk S-shaped, has been trained in
the pyramidal or conical form known as Jikkei, or Jikka. This shape
is intended for the centrepiece of a garden.
Then there are curious representations
of objects, like the spiral or corkscrew, a spider, a grasshopper, one
portraying the long-armed and short-legged man of the well-known Japanese
legend, and storks. An especially interesting stock is formed by
two trees of the Thuja squarrosa, the two trunks standing for the
legs of the bird, and low branches from one tree representing a tortoise
at the stork’s foot. Both these creatures are emblems of longevity.
A pine in the shape of a flag is said to be four hundred years old.
One illustrating a poetical fancy
must be mentioned. A tree is imagined to be growing below a waterfall
that wears away the earth covering the roots, and these come into evidence,
while the wind and the water from the fall drive the foliage of the tree
back from their pushing. This idea is combined with that of a tree
outreaching over a river or body of water. The picture designed long
since by an artist gardener, and slowly painted in brown and green, has
come into the possession of an American.
Again, a dwarf tree shows the
unusual but not altogether infrequent sight of a forest tree that has had
its trunk blown sidewise by the tempest, has then attempted “from the fall
to rise again” and produce another straight trunk, has again fallen sidewise,
again struggled to straighten itself, and so on. As Conder says,
in his fine work on Japanese gardens: “The force of character displayed
in less frequent rather than in commonplace types is to the Japanese mind
one of nature’s chief charms.
“The gardener’s model pine-tree
is not the ordinary pine-tree of the forest, but the abnormal specimen
which age and tempest have moulded into quaint and unusual shapes.”
The ingenuity of the trainers
has produced too many varieties of form to tell or perhaps know all of
them. To appreciate these curious little growths it is as necessary
to know the motif as it is in the comprehension of Wagner’s music.
The trees shown in the illustrations are in the garden of Mr. J. H. A.
Klauder, of Philadelphia. 1
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