The Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection at the

Arnold Arboretum The Arnold Arboretum is a botanical research institution and free public park affiliated with Harvard University and located in the Jamaica Plain and Roslindale, Massachusetts, Roslindale neighborhoods of Boston. Established in 1872, it is the ...

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts Jamaica Plain is a Neighborhoods in Boston, neighborhood of in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Settled by Puritans seeking farmland to the south, it was originally part of Roxbury, Massachusetts, Roxbury. The community seceded from Roxbur ...

is one of the premier collections of

bonsai Bonsai (; , ) is the Japanese art of Horticulture, growing and shaping miniature trees in containers, with a long documented history of influences and native Japanese development over a thousand years, and with unique aesthetics, cultural hist ...

in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and includes a Hinoki Cypress over 250 years old.LABC: The Bonsai at the Arnold Arboretum
The Bonsai Pavilion where the trees are housed are part of the complex of buildings known as the Dana Greenhouses. The collection is on display from mid-April to the end of October. As the bonsai trees are

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed Leaf, leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

, they are held in cold storage at temperatures slightly above freezing throughout the winter.

Larz and Isabel

Larz Anderson Larz Anderson (August 15, 1866 – April 13, 1937) was an American diplomat and ''bon vivant''. He served as second secretary at the United States Legation to the Court of St James's, London; as first secretary and later ''chargé d'affaires ...

had a long interest in the

horticulture Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. He brought two dwarf

maple ''Acer'' is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the soapberry family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated si ...

s back from his first trip to Japan in 1889. In 1907, he and his wife

Isabel Weld Perkins Isabel Anderson (March 29, 1876 – November 3, 1948), , was a Boston heiress, author, and society hostess who left a legacy to the public that includes a park and two museums. Life Early life Born at 284 Marlborough Street in Boston's B ...

built a

Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden desig ...

at Weld (now Larz Anderson Park). But it was in 1913, while Larz Anderson was in Japan as U.S. Ambassador, that the Andersons became truly enraptured with bonsai. He wrote:

About us were dwarf trees of fantastic shape and stunted plum in fragrant bloom, white and pink, and gnarled
tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...
s hundreds of years old with branches blossoming out of seemingly dead trunks in pots of beautiful form and color. Isabel and I stopped so long in this little fairy place that we had to drive like the dickens through the congested streets of endless villages to
Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...
... in time for one o'clock luncheon.LABC: The Japanese Connection

Yokohama Nursery

The Andersons purchased 40 bonsai from the Yokohama Nursery Company. The company's catalogs from 1901 to 1922 are impressive documents, beautifully illustrated with colored plates, line

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

s, and

photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitivity, photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. Th ...

s. In a section titled "Dwarf Trees Growing in Jardinieres" the catalogs show pictures of ancient specimens of Hinoki Cypress similar to those that are now part of the collection. They are captioned "Relics of the

Tokugawa Era The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

". The price Anderson paid for his plants is unknown, but the 1913-1914 edition of the catalog lists prices ranging from one to fifty dollars "in U.S. gold". When the Andersons returned to the US about a month later, they brought these bonsai with them and housed them at Weld.

Rainosuke Awano

At that time, knowledge of how to care for bonsai did not exist among Americans. Instead, the Andersons hired a succession of skilled Japanese gardeners. The most famous of these was Rainosuke Awano, a young man who maintained the collection while studying for his doctorate in philosophy at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. He later returned to Japan and became a professor at

Kwansei Gakuin University , colloquially known as , is a private, non-denominational Christian coeducational university in Japan. The university offers Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral degrees to around 25,000 students in almost 40 different disciplines across 11 underg ...

Public display

On at least two occasions the Andersons displayed their bonsai collection to the public. They first displayed their new collection at the 1916 spring flower show of the

Massachusetts Horticultural Society The Massachusetts Horticultural Society, sometimes abbreviated to Mass Hort or MHS, is an American horticultural society based in Massachusettsbr>It describes itself as the oldest formally organized horticultural institution in the United States ...

. When that same organization sponsored a show of chrysanthemums and Japanese dwarf trees in 1933, the Andersons participated again. On this occasion, ''

House Beautiful ''House Beautiful'' is an interior decorating magazine that focuses on decorating and the domestic arts. First published in 1896, it is currently published by the Hearst Corporation, who began publishing it in 1934. It is the oldest still-publi ...

'' magazine interviewed Rainosuke Awano and showed photographs of the collection. The author described the bonsai with heavy metaphor:

It seems unholy to move such venerable patriarchs from the land where they have lived so long in meditation and repose. But they are here, nevertheless, in this country which was a wilderness when they and their art had reached a high degree of elegance and culture. And on the wide green terrace before the stately Brookline home of Mr. Larz Anderson, noted statesman and scholar, these noble trees, samurai of their realm, seem quite at home. That may be because adaptability is a quality of the nobly born.

The donation

After Larz died in 1937, Isabel donated thirty of these miniature trees to the Arnold Arboretum of

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

along with the funds necessary to build a shade house for their display. When she died in 1948, the remaining nine plants in her possession were donated to the Arboretum including an 80-year-old Hinoki Cypress that had been given to the Andersons by the Imperial Household shortly before they left Japan for the last time.

Decline

Arboretum staff did their best given their limited knowledge of the art of bonsai, but the Larz Anderson Collection suffered from the lack of expert skills needed to keep the fragile trees healthy. The practice of annually forcing them into early growth for the spring flower show of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society contributed the collection's decline. By 1962, 27 of the original 39 bonsai survived. Among those that perished was the Hinoki Cypress that had been

Hirohito , Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...

's gift to the Andersons.

Dana Greenhouses

The 1962 construction of the Charles Stratton Dana Greenhouses was of benefit to the collection. This facility includes a hexagonal,

redwood Sequoioideae, commonly referred to as redwoods, is a subfamily of Pinophyta, coniferous trees within the family (biology), family Cupressaceae, that range in the Northern Hemisphere, northern hemisphere. It includes the List of superlative tree ...

lath house to display the collection during the growing season and a

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of aggregate bound together with a fluid cement that cures to a solid over time. It is the second-most-used substance (after water), the most–widely used building material, and the most-manufactur ...

-block cold storage for winter protection. The latter maintains temperatures between 33 and 35 degrees

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a scale of temperature, temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the German-Polish physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accou ...

. Formerly, the bonsai had been placed in covered pits and cold frames for the winter. This practice compromised the health of the plants and the consequent freezing of the rootballs cracked many of the original Japanese containers.

New expertise

In 1969 the bonsai again came under the care of a true expert. Constance "Connie" Derderian had been teaching courses in bonsai at the Arboretum for several years prior to her appointment. She describes:

Perhaps because I was the only Bostonian who, for almost ten years, had steadily pursued the study of bonsai in the United States and in Japan, in 1969, through the efforts of Mr. Alfred Fordham, Dr. Donald Wyman asked me to repot the Anderson collection of bonsai. I did and began a program to renew the vigor and beauty of these venerable trees. Dr. Richard A. Howard, director, pleased with the initial effort, had me appointed Honorary Curator of the Bonsai Collection.

Under Derderian's care, the remaining portion of the collection was revitalized. When she resigned in 1984, Peter Del Tredici having worked as her apprentice since 1979, became the new curator. In recent years Colin Lewis, a noted bonsai artist and author, has been working on the collection. The health and aesthetic value of the collection is improving under his care.

Theft

The bonsai house was broken into over

Columbus Day Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. He went ashore at ...

weekend 1986. Six plants were stolen, including three

Japanese Maple ''Acer palmatum'', commonly known as Japanese maple, palmate maple, or smooth Japanese maple (Korean: ''danpungnamu'' []; Japanese: ''irohamomiji'' [] or ''momiji'' []), is a species of woody plant native to Korea, Japan, China, eastern Mongol ...

s that were part of the original Larz Anderson Collection. Prompted by this disaster, the Arnold Arboretum renovated the bonsai house. Deteriorating redwood planks were replaced with sturdy

douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...

. New doors allowed visitors an unobstructed view of the collection and a new

security system A security alarm is a system designed to detect intrusions, such as unauthorized entry, into a building or other areas, such as a home or school. Security alarms protect against burglary (theft) or property damage, as well as against intruders. ...

was installed.

Extant specimens

15 plants remain of the original 39 which the Andersons donated:As of March 2003 * 7 Hinoki Cypress (''Chamaecyparis obtusa'') * 4 Japanese Maple (''Acer palmatum'') * 1 Trident Maple (''Acer buergerianum'') * 1 Higan Cherry (Prunus subhirtella) * 1 Sawara Cypress (''Chamaecyparis pisifera'' 'Squarrosa') * 1 Japanese White Pine (''Pinus parviflora'') The Hinoki Cypress seem to be especially hardy; 7 of the 10 original plants are still alive. According to Anderson's records, the oldest of these Hinoki Cypress was started in 1737.