To people always not only that the nature gives them. They try to improve and change the world round themselves. One of results of such aspiration also is a bonsai – the tiny tree which has grown in a superficial vessel, the size no more than a usual window plant. The bonsai is an integral part fashionable now Japanese culture. 
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Many wrongly believe that a bonsai – a grade of any dwarfish tree. Actually it not so. A bonsai – the usual tree, grown in the unusual way. It specially grow up small and curve. There is a question: why the Japanese loving the nature intelligent people so scoff at poor rastenyitsa? Now I will try to answer it.
Bonsai – the art having the centuries-old history. Its homeland – China and India. In Japan the bonsai appeared in the VI century thanks to wandering monks.
Japanese masters divide art a bonsai into 15 styles. By means of them the tree can give the most freakish form. Names of styles – "sweeper", «taken down by a wind», etc. – tell "cascade", «the creeping wood» for themselves. And a bonsai can be not only trees, but also bushes, and even a grass.
Sense of unusual art – to emphasize beauty of the nature, having shown it in one or several tiny plants.
That the tree looked most naturally, the master a bonsai should be not only the skillful gardener, but also the artist. It should present mentally an image of future tree (and here the master can clear up properly – I already mentioned a variety of styles), and then to embody it in a plant. Laziness to read? Then listen!
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The main role in a plant is played by a trunk and branches, after all they and create an image necessary for the master. The great value also has нэбари – system of roots acting on a surface. Edabari – distribution of branches on a trunk – should be very strict. The branches which were crossed, thin and growing from one place are not allowed. Leaves a bonsai should have pleasant coloring, to be small and in an abundance to settle down in a crown. The bark surely should be rough and old.
One of the most important steps of creation the bonsai is a container choice.
It would seem, what difference, grows in what pot a tree, all the same it – a work of art. But after all with a plant of tortures most of all!
That fact is interesting that bonsaist usually choose plants of local flora. So birches quite are suitable for Russia!
In Japan more than 100 thousand bonsai, and some of them already some honeycombs of years are. All of them are national property.
Bonsai – one plant is not obligatory, in one pot can raise some trees and grassy plants.
Not all a bonsai are received by an artificial way. Many fans of this art form look for already "ready" tiny plants in the nature to turn them in ямадори – the tree gradually turned into a miniature which has grown in the nature. They forget that in art the bonsai is important not so much result, how many a way to it.
To look at a bonsai very pleasantly, personally it calms me and directs at philosophical reflections.
I have no tree, but even the composition seen on the picture a bonsai makes indelible impression. And to grow up them, probably, even more pleasantly. But what is required east patience that during decades to wait for desirable result!