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Truth and Beauty, in PotsBonsai at Harvard
Acer buergerianum, trident maple, started in 1852. About 30 inches high, it has been in this bonsai container since at least 1913. The hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa 'Chabo-hiba') at right, started in 1787, is more than five feet wide. Photographs by Jim Harrison |
Imagine yourself a hinoki cypress. How would you rate your chances of survival for 262 years if you had to depend on somebody watering you twice a day (depending on the weather)? The most ancient specimen in the Larz Anderson Collection of Dwarf Plants at the Arnold Arboretum was put into a pot by an unknown Japanese initiator in 1737, the year Nadir Shah reduced Baluchistan, John Hancock was born, and Linnaeus explained his system for classifying plants.
Larz Anderson, A.B. 1888, was briefly ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Japan, and upon his return to the United States in 1913 he imported at least 40 bonsai from the Yokohama Nursery Company. When he died in 1937, his wife gave 30 of the plants to the arboretum, and when she died nine more came.
Older bonsai exist in the United States, but these have probably been in residence longer than any others, says Peter Del Tredici, director of living collections at the arboretum and curator of the Anderson dwarf plants. Some of these, including the cypress below, are in the style of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) and are too large and in pots too deep to meet bonsai standards. They are called hachi-no-ki, and cognoscenti, says Del Tredici, consider them decorative, while "bonsai is an art form with high aesthetic aspirations." In a 1989 article about the collection in the arboretum's journal, Arnoldia, Del Tredici wrote, "Japanese bonsai idealizes nature in order to achieve the philosophical goals of truth and beauty."
Few Americans in 1913 had any inkling of how to train, prune, and maintain these plants, and so Anderson hired a succession of Japanese gardeners, the most noted of them being Rainosuke Awano, who looked after the collection while studying for his doctorate in philosophy at Columbia. When Harvard's gardeners took charge, they made mistakes through ignorance and plants died. Thieves lifted three in a 1986 break-in. Only 15 of the original 39 remain. Yet the collection has been augmented by bonsai old and young from other sources, including a number started by Del Tredici himself, and its keepers have grown clever. Today the venerable cypress is tended expertly by those continuing what began in 1737 --an unbroken commitment, a collective masterwork.