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Fractal created by Louise. Used Fractal Explorer

Bonsai is a Japanese version of the original traditional Chinese art penjing or penzai. Unlike penjing, which utilizes traditional techniques to produce entire natural sceneries in small pots that mimic the grandiose and shape of real life sceneries, the Japanese "bonsai" only attempts to produce small trees that mimic the shape of real life trees. Similar versions of the art exist in other cultures, including the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese Hòn non bộ. It was during the Tang dynasty, when penjing was at its height, that the art was first introduced into Japan.

The loanword "bonsai" (a Japanese pronunciation of the original Chinese term penzai) has become an umbrella term in English, attached to many forms of potted or other plants, and also on occasion to other living and non-living things. According to Stephen Orr in The New York Times, "the term should be reserved for plants that are grown in shallow containers following the precise tenets of bonsai pruning and training, resulting in an artful miniature replica of a full-grown tree in nature." In the most restrictive sense, "bonsai" refers to miniaturized, container-grown trees adhering to Japanese tradition and principles.

Purposes of bonsai are primarily contemplation for the viewer, and the pleasant exercise of effort and ingenuity for the grower. By contrast with other plant cultivation practices, bonsai is not intended for production of food or for medicine. Instead, bonsai practice focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container.

A bonsai is created beginning with a specimen of source material. This may be a cutting, seedling, or small tree of a species suitable for bonsai development. Bonsai can be created from nearly any perennial woody-stemmed tree or shrub species that produces true branches and can be cultivated to remain small through pot confinement with crown and root pruning. Some species are popular as bonsai material because they have characteristics, such as small leaves or needles, that make them appropriate for the compact visual scope of bonsai.

The source specimen is shaped to be relatively small and to meet the aesthetic standards of bonsai, which emphasizes not the entirety of grand sceneries but rather only the tree itself. When the candidate bonsai nears its planned final size, it is planted in a display pot, usually one designed for bonsai display in one of a few accepted shapes and proportions. From that point forward, its growth is restricted by the pot environment. Throughout the year, the bonsai is shaped to limit growth, redistribute foliar vigor to areas requiring further development, and meet the artist's detailed design.

The practice of bonsai is sometimes confused with dwarfing, but dwarfing generally refers to research, discovery, or creation of plants that are permanent, genetic miniatures of existing species. Plant dwarfing often uses selective breeding or genetic engineering to create dwarf cultivars. Bonsai does not require genetically dwarfed trees but rather depends on growing small trees from regular stock and seeds. Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like pruning, root reduction, potting, defoliation, and grafting to produce small trees that mimic the shape and style of mature, full-size trees.

Aesthetics

Bonsai aesthetics are the aesthetic goals characterizing the Japanese tradition of growing an artistically shaped miniature tree in a container. Many Japanese cultural characteristics, in particular the influence of Zen Buddhism and the expression of Wabi-sabi, inform the bonsai tradition in Japan. Established art forms that share some aesthetic principles with bonsai include penjing and saikei. A number of other cultures around the globe have adopted the Japanese aesthetic approach to bonsai, and, while some variations have begun to appear, most hew closely to the rules and design philosophies of the Japanese tradition.

Over centuries of practice, the Japanese bonsai aesthetic has encoded some important techniques and design guidelines. Like the aesthetic rules that govern, for example, Western common practice period music, bonsai's guidelines help practitioners work within an established tradition with some assurance of success. Simply following the guidelines alone will not guarantee a successful result. Nevertheless, these design rules can rarely be broken without reducing the impact of the bonsai specimen. Some key principles in bonsai aesthetics include:

Miniaturization: By definition, a bonsai is a tree kept small enough to be container-grown while otherwise fostered to have a mature appearance.

Proportion among elements: The most prized proportions mimic those of a full-grown tree as closely as possible. Small trees with large leaves or needles are out of proportion and are avoided, as is a thin trunk with thick branches.

Asymmetry: Bonsai aesthetics discourage strict radial or bilateral symmetry in branch and root placement.

No trace of the artist: The designer's touch must not be apparent to the viewer. If a branch is removed in shaping the tree, the scar will be concealed. Likewise, wiring should be removed or at least concealed when the bonsai is shown, and must leave no permanent marks on the branch or bark.

Poignancy: Many of the formal rules of bonsai help the grower create a tree that expresses Wabi-sabi, or portrays an aspect of mono no aware.

Pitcher. Fractal created by Jenny. Used Fractal Explorer.

A pitcher plant is a carnivorous plant (also called as Insectivorous plant). Carnivorous plants are plants that eat insects and other small animals. Carnivorous plants grow in soil that has little nitrogen. All living things must have nitrogen. Carnivorous plants get nitrogen from the insects they eat.

The pitcher of the pitcher plant is actually a modified leaf. The apex of the leaf is the lid. Pitcher plants catch (get) insects in a cup of liquid. The walls of the cup make nectar (sweet liquid) . The nectar attracts insects. When an insect lands on the wall, it falls down into the liquid. The insect cannot get out of the cup because the walls are smooth and slippery and the walls have hairs pointing down.

After the insect is dead, its body rots. Rotting releases (lets loose) the nitrogen from the insect's body. The nitrogen then goes into the liquid and the plant takes in the nitrogen from the liquid.

It is widely assumed pitfall traps evolved by epiascidiation (infolding of the leaf with the adaxial or upper surface becoming the inside of the pitcher), with selection pressure favouring more deeply cupped leaves over evolutionary time. The pitcher trap evolved independently in three eudicot lineages and one monocot lineage, representing a case of convergent evolution. Some pitcher plant families (such as Nepenthaceae) are placed within clades consisting mostly of flypaper traps, indicating that some pitchers may have evolved from the common ancestors of today's flypaper traps by loss of mucilage.

Foraging, flying, or crawling insects such as flies are attracted to a cavity formed by the cupped leaf, often by visual lures such as anthocyanin pigments, and nectar. The rim of the pitcher (peristome) is slippery when moistened by condensation or nectar, causing insects to fall into the trap. Pitcher plants may also contain waxy scales, protruding aldehyde crystals, cuticular that insects cannot climb out.^[1] The small bodies of liquid contained within the pitcher traps are called phytotelmata. They drown the insect, whose body is gradually dissolved. This may occur by bacterial action (the bacteria being washed into the pitcher by rainfall), or by enzymes secreted by the plant itself. Furthermore, some pitcher plants contain mutualistic insect larvae, which feed on trapped prey, and whose excreta the plant absorbs.^[5] Whatever the mechanism of digestion, the prey items are converted into a solution of amino acids, peptides, phosphates, ammonium and urea, from which the plant obtains its mineral nutrition (particularly nitrogen and phosphorus). Like all carnivorous plants, they all grow in locations where the soil is too poor in minerals and/or too acidic for most plants to survive. Pitcher plants supplement available nutrients and minerals (which plants normally obtain through their roots) with the constituents of their insect prey.

Mature plants of Nepenthes lowii attract tree shrews (Tupaia montana), which feed on nectar that the plant produces but also defecate into the pitcher, providing nitrates and other nutrients. The plant and tree shrew have a symbiotic relationship. The rim of N. lowii is not slippery so that tree shrews can easily get in and out; it provides more nectar than other pitcher plants. The shape of the pitcher rim and the position of the nectar ensure that the animal's hindquarters are over the rim while it feeds.

It is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus Betula contains 30 to 60 known taxa of which 11 are on the IUCN 2011 Red List of Threatened Species. They are a typically rather short-lived pioneer species widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in northern areas of temperate climates and in boreal climates.

Silverwood. Fractal created by Jenny.

She used Fractal Explorer.

Birch species are generally small to medium-sized trees or shrubs, mostly of northern temperate and boreal climates. The simple leaves are alternate, singly or doubly serrate, feather-veined, petiolate and stipulate. They often appear in pairs, but these pairs are really borne on spur-like, two-leaved, lateral branchlets. The fruit is a small samara, although the wings may be obscure in some species. They differ from the alders (Alnus, other genus in the family) in that the female catkins are not woody and disintegrate at maturity, falling apart to release the seeds, unlike the woody, cone-like female alder catkins.

Silvertime. Fractal created by Jenny.

She used Fractal Explorer.

The bark of all birches is characteristically marked with long, horizontal lenticels, and often separates into thin, papery plates, especially upon the paper birch. Distinctive colors give the common names gray, white, black, silver and yellow birch to different species.

The buds, forming early and full-grown by midsummer, are all lateral, without a terminal bud forming; the branch is prolonged by the upper lateral bud. The wood of all the species is close-grained with a satiny texture and capable of taking a fine polish; its fuel value is fair.

Flower and fruit

The flowers are monoecious, opening with or before the leaves. Once fully grown, these leaves are usually 3–6 millimetres long on three-flowered clusters in the axils of the scales of drooping or erect catkins or aments. Staminate catkins are pendulous, clustered, or solitary in the axils of the last leaves of the branch of the year or near the ends of the short lateral branchlets of the year. They form in early autumn and remain rigid during the winter. The scales of the mature staminate catkins are broadly ovate, rounded, yellow or orange color below the middle, and dark chestnut brown at apex. Each scale bears two bractlets and three sterile flowers, each flower consisting of a sessile, membranous, usually two-lobed, calyx. Each calyx bears four short filaments with one-celled anthers or strictly, two filaments divided into two branches, each bearing a half-anther. Anther cells open longitudinally. The pistillate segments are erect or pendulous, and solitary, terminal on the two-leaved lateral spur-like branchlets of the year. The pistillate scales are oblong-ovate, three-lobed, pale yellow-green often tinged with red, becoming brown at maturity. These scales bear two or three fertile flowers, each flower consisting of a naked ovary. The ovary is compressed, two-celled, and crowned with two slender styles; the ovule is solitary. Each scale bears a single small, winged nut that is oval, with two persistent

Medical

Approved topical medicine

In the European Union, a prescription gel containing birch bark extract (commercial name Episalvan, betulae cortex dry extract (5-10 : 1); extraction solvent: n-heptane 95% (w/w)) was approved in 2016 for the topical treatment of minor skin wounds in adults. Although its mechanism of action in helping to heal injured skin is not fully understood, birch bark extract appears to stimulate the growth of keratinocytes which then fill the wound.

Research and traditional medicine

Preliminary research indicates that the phytochemicals, betulin and possibly other triterpenes, are active in Episalvan gel and wound healing properties of birch bark.

Over centuries, birch bark was used in traditional medicine practices by North American indigenous people for treating superficial wounds by applying bark directly to the skin. Splints made with birch bark were used as casts for broken limbs in the 16th century.

Photo taken by Jacek.

Peony. Fractal created by Lynn with Apophysis.

The peony or paeony is a flowering plant in the genus Paeonia, the only genus in the family Paeoniaceae. Peonies are native to Asia, Europe and Western North America. Scientists differ on the number of species that can be distinguished, ranging from 25 to 40, although the current consensus is 33 known species. The relationships between the species need to be further clarified.

Most are herbaceous perennial plants 0.25–1 metre tall, but some are woody shrubs 0.25–3.5 metres tall. They have compound, deeply lobed leaves and large, often fragrant flowers, in colors ranging from purple and pink to red, white or yellow, in late spring and early summer. The flowers have a short blooming season, usually only 7–10 days.

Peonies are popular garden plants in temperate regions. Herbaceous peonies are also sold as cut flowers on a large scale, although generally only available in late spring and early summer.

Meaning In the language of flowers, the peony carries the symbolic meaning of romance, compassion, good luck, prosperity, a happy marriage, and even bashfulness. In their native China, peonies are often referred to as the “queen of flowers” and are the official state flower of Indiana.

https://www.petalrepublic.com/peonies-flowers/

Peony. Fractal created by Alida, She used Fractal Explorer

The first generation of Kao, wild peony, Ranunculaceae, and medicinal

genus, was founded in 1800 meters in Baiyun Mountain, Song County, Henan. Transplanted by Cui Yueqi, the owner of the house, in May 1958, after 27 years of labor and land, the plant chapter of "Henan Geography Knowledge Expo" was filmed by China Education Television in April 2017. The height of the tree is 1.7 meters, the diameter of the canopy is more than two meters, and the number of flowers will reach 350 in the future. The peony is among the longest-used flowers in Eastern culture. Along with the plum blossom, it is a traditional floral symbol of China, where the Paeonia suffruticosa is called (mǔdān). It is also known as "flower of riches and honour" or "king of the flowers", and is used symbolically in Chinese art.

In 1903, the Qing dynasty declared the peony as the national flower. Currently, the Republic of China government in Taiwan designates the plum blossom as the national flower, while the People's Republic of China government has no legally designated national flower. In 1994, the peony was proposed as the national flower after a nationwide poll, but the National People's Congress failed to ratify the selection. In 2003, another selection process was initiated, but no choice has been made to date.

The ancient Chinese city Luoyang has a reputation as a cultivation centre for the peonies. Throughout Chinese history, peonies in Luoyang have been said to be the finest in the country. Dozens of peony exhibitions and shows are still held there annually.

In the Middle Ages, peonies were often painted with their ripe seed-capsules, since it was the seeds, not the flowers, which were medically significant. Ancient superstition dictated that great care be taken not to be seen by a woodpecker while picking the plant's fruit, or the bird might peck out one's eyes.

The red flowers of the species Paeonia peregrina are important in Serbian folklore. Known as Kosovo peonies (Serbian: косовски божур, kosovski božur), they are said to represent the blood of Serbian warriors who died in the Battle of Kosovo.

In 1957, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law to make the peony the state flower of Indiana, a title which it holds to this day. It replaced the zinnia, which had been the state flower since 1931.^[37]

Mischievous nymphs were said to hide in the petals of the Peony, giving it the meaning of Shame or Bashfulness in the Language of Flowers. While the peony takes several years to re-establish itself when moved, it blooms annually for decades once it has done so.

Peonies tend to attract ants to the flower buds. This is due to the nectar that forms on the outside of the flower buds, and is not required for the plants' own pollination or other growth. The presence of ants is thought to provide some deterrence to other harmful insects though, so the production of ant-attracting nectar is plausibly a functional adaptation. Ants do not harm the plants.

Peonies are a common subject in tattoos, often used along with koi-fish. The popular use of peonies in Japanese tattoo was inspired by the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi's illustrations of Suikoden, a classical Chinese novel. His paintings of warrior-heroes covered in pictorial tattoos included lions, tigers, dragons, koi fish, and peonies, among other symbols. The peony became a masculine motif, associated with a devil-may-care attitude and disregard for consequence.

Famous painters of peonies have included Conrad Gessner (ca. 1550) and Auguste Renoir in 1879. Paeonia officinalis can be found in the altar picture of Maria im Rosenhag by Schongauer in the former Dominican Church in Colmar.^[34] The Italian Jesuit, painter and architect Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), who worked at the court of the Qianlong Emperor in the Qing dynasty, painted peonies.

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