Tanuki Bonsai Experiment

Tanuki Bonsai

My Tanuki Bonsai Experiment consisted of merging a live tree with a dead tree to give the appearance of a very old bonsai tree. Tanuki is a Japanese word meaning ‘badger,’ as in the ferocious digging animal, sometimes called a wolverine. It is not necessarily a term of endearment.

A Tanuki Bonsai is a type of bonsai tree that is made by combining two trees, one dead and one alive. An American version of this is the Phoenix graft. But in this case, I am using raffia, a fibrous material, to attach the live tree to the deadwood as an experiment. The raffia lasted about a year. Later, I fused the tree together and can be seen in a second video. For the permanent attachment, I used small wood screws.

The reason I began this experiment, was because I had a very large dead juniper and a live smaller parsoni juniper that had a badly malformed trunk and was not suitable for use as a stand-alone bonsai tree. Rather than discard these items, I chose to see if I could combine them into a single tree.

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