| "The Little
Trees of Japan" (1908):
IN striking contrast to the giant Redwoods,
or "Big Trees," described on another page, are the miniature trees of Japan.
These are not "baby trees," but grown ones which have been dwarfed by special
treatment through a great number of years. Thus an oak, a maple,
or a pine which, if left to Nature, would have been an ordinary tree has
become in the hands of Japanese gardeners a pot plant, perfect in all its
proportions, but only a foot or two high, even though it may be several
hundred years old. The exact process is a secret [sic],
but we know, roughly, that when a seed or cutting is planted it is starved
in poor shallow earth, and the tips of its growing roots and branches are
continually cut off. This treatment is continued by generations of
gardeners until we get the fascinating, if rather mournful, little trees
of to-day, a forest of which would grow in a drawing-room. Often,
too, the gardeners train the trees so that their form expresses some idea
— a dragon ascending to heaven is, for instance, a favourite one. 1
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(Photographs by Clarke & Hyde and
Special Press)
JAPANESE PIGMY TREES
1. A tree shaped as a junk. 2. A century-old
tree which is only two feet high. 3. Sixty years old and only
eighteen inches high.
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