I am doing some experiments at home with acorns and this one decided to EXPLODE. I wonder how trees turn into little versions of themselves. I guess it has something to do with stunning its growth without killing it, but then, why do they look like little trees and not flimsy little green sticks? Any resources? Ideas for experiments? I'm trying to learn by myself.
by ImNotNormal19
5 Comments
I dont get your question.
Which part are you unsure of, the how do plants make solid matter part or the how do they know their shape part?
r/bonsai might be a better place to start
My understanding is that restricting how a plant grows with bonsai is reversible e.g. if you plant a full bonsai in the ground, it will grow into a more normal sized tree
As to why they don’t turn into flimsy green sticks, they still respond to environmental conditions and mature on cue – you’d need to block the physiological signals that trigger maturation.
Hoping the ‘proper’ botanist can jump in here, but I understand if you want a ‘baby’ tree that stays a green stick, you’d want to interfere with vascular cambium, lignification, and a few other processes that are controlled via environment & genetic signals
As others said – r/bonsai is a better place to look. Bonsai is an art so it’s really all interpretation. But here’s some guidelines:
– the goal is to make a small tree appear as a mature tree.
– nebari or root flare is important and sometimes exaggerated.
– most of the growing is done outside of the pot. The pot restricts the growth and is one of the final stages.
– cutting branches to encourage them to branch out more is considered essential and is called ramification.
Most bonsai trees you don’t start off in a pot. If you grow them in a pot, they will just be a ‘stick in a pot’ for a long, long time until the trunk slowly thickens. A lot of people field grow them in the ground while still managing the roots a little bit or just harvest stunted trees from the wild and prune the roots enough over time to fit into a bonsai pot
To add to what others have noted: Perhaps it would also be fruitful to look into hormones that could be regulating growth. Though I could be way off cause I haven’t studied hormones much yet.