In a recent issue of International Bonsai magazine, there was a very
instructive article about roots, especially nebari. It should be required reading for
anyone who sells bonsai. Cheap mallsai and garden center shrubs are one thing,
but I should not pay good money to an established well-known bonsai nursery
for a semifinished tree in a bonsai pot, or even a semi-starter plant, and find
a disaster when I go to repot it. I have found the ground level four inches
above the root ball, the roots all tangled up in a knot from the original
cutting pot, a nebari consisting of two or three large roots not even at the same
level, strangler roots, or other unspeakable horrors.
Yes, I realize that it is labor intensive for you to prune and straighten out
the roots of a young tree when you repot it. But looking back on the root
problems I have struggled with, I would rather pay a few dollars more for a tree
with decent roots. With a professional bonsai nursery, it shouldn't be What
You See is What You Get and Let the Buyer Beware. We amateurs should be able to
trust you to sell stock with the invisible part as good as the visible part,
or at least reasonably usable.
When you buy an appliance or other inanimate object, there is an implied
warranty that the item will do what it is being sold to do ("merchantability").
When you buy bonsai stock, there should be an implied warranty that the plant is
suitable for bonsai, including the root system.
This is also a warning to the beginning amateurs. When you buy a tree,
especially an expensive one, be sure to poke around the roots under the soil level
to see exactly what you are getting. Sometimes the problem is that the retailer
buys already potted trees from a wholesale nursery & resells them as is.
Repotting each tree in a shipment would make them too expensive. Buyers should
examine these trees very carefully.
Iris

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