This is also my understanding of traditional styles.The clasifications of bonsai is based primatily upon the trunk, and not how the branches are arranged. Formal uprights are trees with straight trunks. Slants are trees that grow up at an angle and have their apex either to o the right or left of the nebari. Informal uprights are trees with a moving trunk, but the apex is centered over the nebari.
Brooms are a special category within the Formal Upright classification. They have a straight, vertical, trunk. Then, the trunk divides into many smaller branches.
There is also a “center line broom”. This style has a single trunk, but instead of the traditional “first branch, second branch, back branch” arrangement, it has many smaller branches coming from the trunk at all directions.
My point exactly. I like the idea of being able to gauge a pathway to development using a style or form, but not to use or broaden a category which doesn’t necessarily fit.This is also my understanding of traditional styles.
Trees with bent and twisted trunks are not broom style in the traditional sense no matter how the branches are arranged. Broom is deciduous variant of formal upright.
I don't think all bonsai need to be classified into one of the traditional styles. I do not really feel the need to put all my trees into categories so I would rather see unclassified good bonsai than to try to stretch the styles to encompass trees that do not fit the existing style guidelines. I'm sure the current range of traditional styles have been added to over time. Maybe adding new styles would be better than stretching the current ones to encompass shapes they were never meant to include.
In the end there are only good bonsai. Does not matter whether they fit into an artificial classification system or not.
A broom isn't a broom...when it's a mop.
Sorry that's the only thing that pops into my head when I read that question.
Filling the rabbit hole with dirt...moving along.
Well, I must admit, I can admire ones who love broom. I have none on my bench, I'm more of a neagari gal. So, I didn't read the thread...your comment made me hunt to see if you had commented. Which you had. Well now...you dropped the mic and I tripped over it. Great minds...I held off posting because I tried to not be ornery...or I may have been first. lol good one. I bet we aren't the only ones who think that with the title.Ha! See! That was my first response, too! (I just happened to be by an “internet machine” first)
I like your style..
I think you might be missing the point of my postwhat if i told you that this was an oak tree,
I think you might be missing the point of my post
The point was, in his mind, broom requires Zelkova. All other species are not a broom. Independent of growth form. We had an interesting discussion full of translation difficulties (Me in my best German explaining to a German guy, who translated to Japanese, and back, hovering over sketches and pictures of species!). We never did get to the point where we agreed. I just gave up at some point. The idea that another species then Zelkove would be a broom was just something he needed to process. Did not fit in his viewpoint. So for him it was shape AND species that made a broom.
So do we need a new categorisation then? Or, do we ignore the tradition? I can’t decide what’s right here.I think you might be missing the point of my post
The point was, in his mind, broom requires Zelkova. All other species are not a broom. Independent of growth form. We had an interesting discussion full of translation difficulties (Me in my best German explaining to a German guy, who translated to Japanese, and back, hovering over sketches and pictures of species!). We never did get to the point where we agreed. I just gave up at some point. The idea that another species then Zelkove would be a broom was just something he needed to process. Did not fit in his viewpoint. So for him it was shape AND species that made a broom.
Are you hoping we say because that’s how it naturally grows?why is it only narrowed down to zelkova?
i have images of wild zelkova trees and i know how they grow. i can show you wild hornbeams, oaks that look like this at one stage of their life.
I think you might be missing the point of my post
The point was, in his mind, broom requires Zelkova. All other species are not a broom. Independent of growth form. We had an interesting discussion full of translation difficulties (Me in my best German explaining to a German guy, who translated to Japanese, and back, hovering over sketches and pictures of species!). We never did get to the point where we agreed. I just gave up at some point. The idea that another species then Zelkove would be a broom was just something he needed to process. Did not fit in his viewpoint. So for him it was shape AND species that made a broom.
So do we need a new categorisation then? Or, do we ignore the tradition? I can’t decide what’s right here.
I agree.....aside from the contradictionsi think Harry has nailed the forms pretty well. wont go wrong if you stick to that mate.