NABF Newsletter #10

BONSAI IN THE SOUTH CENTRAL REGION

Mary Bloomer, South Central editor

The designation South Central Region is perhaps a bit of a misnomer, as we tend to think of South as hot and humid, and Central as wheat and corn fields. To be sure, this an oversimplification, but did you know that the NABF's South Central Region encompasses a large portion of the Great American Desert and some of America's highest mountain peaks?

From Colorado and western Texas to central California, from the Mexico border up into Oregon, rainfall is scarce. For such an uninviting sounding place, you might be surprised to learn that it can be incredible beautiful and varied. Consider that more than half of the best ski areas in North America are located on mountain ranges surrounded by desert. The high mountains pushed up by the Pacific Plate have reached altitudes high enough to capture moisture from passing clouds, producing the needed rain in the summer and snowpack in the winter. For some areas that includes whole mountain ranges, for others single mountains, often of volcanic in origin, do the same thing. For you suiseki lovers the bare-looking desert mountains in Arizona, California, and Nevada are wonderful examples of near mountain stones (Kinzan-seki) - naked without a covering of forest to conceal their outline and features.

I think most everyone reading this knows of or has visited the famous Bristlecone Pines (Pinus aristata) in the mountains of southern Nevada and eastern California. These ancients have been around for thousands of years, sentinels of the centuries, but they are not alone in the American Southwest. The San Francisco Peaks, an extinct volcano that, at 12,680 feet at its crest, looms over Flagstaff, Arizona is home to a number or groves of bristlecone pines, as is Mount Graham in Southern Arizona. Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico are also home to remnant groves of bristlecones. I believe that, in the desert regions, altitude means survival for the more temporate-loving plants.

Ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa) which many bonsai enthusiasts know and love, are in fact semi-arid loving trees. Pinon pine (Pinus edulis) is another semi-desert dweller, usually growing at a lower elevation than the colder-loving Ponderosa. To go further afield, however, many bonsai enthusiasts in the South Central Region are experimenting with desert materials such as creosote bush (Larrea tridentate), an open, graceful bush with yellow flowers and a lacy outline. Creosote is found in all western deserts, including Death Valley National Park.

For middle altitudes there is Manzanita, with its 300-some-odd varieties. Manzanita has caught on with bonsai enthusiasts in California and Arizona. All of the species I have mentioned (and this is by no means an exhaustive list) have found their way into bonsai pots and collections wherever climatic conditions allow them to flourish. Many of the old cultivation ways I learned in the East don't work well in Arizona. Native plants have evolved to tolerate even severe droughts, and wet soil can be a killer. The rewards for learning the needs of these plants can be tremendoudly rewarding, however, for some of the loveliest bonsai anywhere.