Greetings. Firstly, I want to congratulate you on an excellent webpage. It is very informative on the concepts of Bonsai. I'm interested in trying to create a Bonsai Live Oak. I'm from the Gulf Coast area in the United States and we have some magnificent "Live Oaks" which naturally grow all over the place. I was wondering if I should start from an acorn or seedling?

Cory

Thanks for your question Cory,

In relation as to whether you should use a seedling or acorn to start a Oak Bonsai, there are positives and negatives to both options. The positives of using an acorn/seed is that you can grow various plants and see which one turns out best - being able to care for it and develop it into a bonsai from day 1. The downside of using an acorn to start a bonsai is that there is genetic variation - and you might get a quite different type of plant (i.e. leaf structure, strength and color) compared to the tree you collected the acorns from. It of course also takes a lot longer to grow.

The positive side of using a seedling is that it is much easier to determine what bonsai style to make the plant into, you can see changes in foliage etc., you can pick out the plant you want from quite a diverse, established range and it doesn't take as much time. The negative side is that you may not see the right type of plant that YOU want for bonsai - in which case you can choose to grow your own seedling.

You can also explore the option of propogation - which has various advantages such as that you are able to get the plant fruiting much earlier compared to that of a seedling and are able to already have a pleasing branch and trunk structure (being a carefully picked part of the parent plant).

Personally, I prefer propogation overall as it is very easy to do with the right equipment and you have an instant tree to start to develop. I love this method. Secondly I would choose seedlings way before growing plants by seed. In my opinion, it is too much trouble if there is good material (seedlings) of the same species around that you can access.

Dan