Page 40 - BSAM 2017 Q1

38 | BCI | January/February/March 2017
Seven
Logwood
Years
CREATING A LOGWOOD BONSAI FROM RAW MATERIAL
By Budi Sulistyo, Indonesia
On June 2009 I had a chance to visit Puerto Rico. One thing that I like most about Puerto Rico is that it is a tropical is- land on the other side of the globe from my home land, the Indonesian archipelago, but I really feel home on this tiny island with the temperature, weather, greenery, coastal area,
rain forest that are quite similar to what I experience every day at home. One di erence is that Puerto Rico is very well managed with good infra- structure and organized surroundings. I can imagine that one day when Indonesia makes progress is these areas, it will be like Puerto Rico, but on a very large scale. Anyhow, I found that there were some trees that I could not nd in Indonesia. One of them is logwood.
Logwood or Haematoxylum campechianum grow mostly in the south of Puerto Rico near the dry forest. Although it is a small island, Puerto Rico has tremendous di erences of climates from a rain forest in the North- east to the dry forest in the Southwest. During my trip to the dry forest we stopped in a logwood forest. I saw that almost all trees were growing straight. It made me wonder of how to have a bending logwood bonsai that is di erent from most logwood bonsai in the island.
In the following day I asked my friend José Luis, a bonsai artist from Puerto Rico, to go to some plant nurseries where bonsai material is sold.