Wild Olive

by Ernie Kuo

Wild olives in California came from seeds of European olive (Olea europaea). As far as I can tell, wild olives do not produce fruits. They have smaller, greener and rounder leaves than the original fruiting olives. They are very good bonsai material because they usually have old looking trunks even when they are relatively young.

This wild olive was purchased in 1990 growing in a rusty 5-gallon metal can. The roots of the tree had grown out of the drainage holes of the can into the ground and thereby developed a very old looking trunk. All the branches of this bonsai were trained by the clip-and-grow and directional pruning.

Wild olives tended to bud close to the base of the tree when the top of the tree was pruned and therefore the lowest branch was a late comer resulted from the constant pruning of the top. I think because this bonsai was styled by pruning alone it had retained some of the natural growing characteristics of wild olives. The tree stands 19 inches tall in an oval Chinese pot.

For those who are not familiar with the clip-and-grow method of training a bonsai, I will describe it briefly. In essence, all the long and uninteresting branches on the raw material are pruned back to leave some foliage. This serves to force back budding so that more pruning may be performed later when foliage emerges from the back bud. This goes on until the primary branch is shortened to the desired length. Then, the foliage growing in the desired direction is allowed to grow and then pruned back to the last pair of foliage. This procedure is repeated again and again until the desired shape of the tree is attained.

This method of training is best used for fast growing trees like this wild olive. Every change in direction of the branches in this bonsai is achieved by pruning. Wiring has not been used at all.

The advantages of using this method are as follows:

1. There will not be any wiring scars on the branches.

2. The change in direction of the branches will look more natural.

3. The structure of the tree, once achieved, will be there forever.