I have purchased several species of deciduous saplings this spring and some beech saplings last year. There is a problem that seems to be more and more consistent. The trees are started in tubes, and then allowed to stay in the tubes way to long. Then you get a knot of twisted, very tight roots, that are headed straight down with feeder roots at the bottom. I'm not sure of the time frame here, but it looks like some of the younger tube grown that were is the tubes to long have been re-planted, but the roots were left as is so you just get a bigger knot of roots all headed down verses out. In order to make this work for shallower bonsai pots, the roots have to be cut off and maybe bent outwards, but if this tube grown seedling has been allowed to grow like this for very long, the roots are fairly big in diameter and hard to get trained to grow out. Also when cutting off the downward roots for the bonsai pots, your going to loose some trees. I wish I had taken some pictures lately of the ones I received. I will ask more questions BEFORE I purchase any more saplings.