Do Bonsai Trees Produce Fruit?

I have been asked so many times about bonsai trees and their ability to fruit, the simple answer is that yes, they can grow fruit, just like any other tree.

It may take longer than a tree grown in the ground, but there is nothing stopping a bonsai from growing fruit, and you could even eat it. 

What Bonsai Trees Will Produce Fruit?

Any tree that can produce fruit when it is a full size grown tree can produce fruit when it is a bonsai. If you have an apple bonsai, it can grow apples. So long as the species you own can produce fruit, your bonsai will be able to.

When we think about what fruit is and then what a bonsai is, it makes sense that this can happen.

Fruit is just a reproductive method used by trees to spread their seeds and bonsais trees are just miniature versions of full size trees.

Our goal in bonsai is to keep the tree very healthy, so it makes sense that a healthy tree, even if it is small, would try and reproduce.

If you think of any tree, they all produce some sort of seeds. Some trees produce seeds inside fruit, others just make the seeds in other ways. For example the little helicopter seed pods that maples make, or the cones that pines make.

It doesn’t matter what tree you have, it will try and reproduce at some point, so no matter what bonsai you have you have the potential to have flowers, seeds or fruit depending on the species and how it reproduces.     

Can You Grow Bonsai Trees From Fruit?

You can also grow bonsai trees from fruit. It doesn’t matter if that fruit came from a full size tree, or a bonsai, you should be able to grow the seeds and start a new tree.

There is the issue that some seeds will not be genetically identical to the parent, but there is nothing stopping you growing the seed and seeing what happens. You can train these trees to be small bonsai or even plant them in the ground and let them become fully grown trees.

I have started pretty much all of my fruit bonsai trees from fruit I have bought in the shop.

This also means if your bonsai tree doesn’t produce fruit, just seeds (like a maple) you can still grow these seeds and make more trees.   

How Long Will It Take For A Bonsai To Produce Fruit?

This is one of my most asked questions. Everyone wants to know how long it will take for their little bonsai tree to grow fruit. The honest answer is that it depends. There is no real solid answer.

You need to firstly investigate what species you have. You can then look up how long it takes for this type of tree to fruit. The answers you find will be when it is a full size tree. You need to realise that this time is when the tree is given optimum conditions, when it’s allowed to grow in the ground and take as many resources as it needs.

When you introduce a tree to a bonsai pot it will change this dynamic drastically. I am sure your tree will be healthy under your care, but the restrictions of a pot can really hamper a tree and its ability to mature to a reproductive state. It should still get there; just expect it to take much longer.

I can’t say it if it will be 1 year longer, take twice as long or take 10 times as long. There is no way to give any form of estimate as there are so many different factors affecting it. The species, the growing conditions, your climate and just the tree its self are all going to have an effect on when it will produce fruit.

You just need to wait and the tree will fruit when it’s ready.

How You Might Be Effecting A Bonsais Ability To Fruit

You may be patient and wait many years to let it your bonsai get old enough to produce fruit, but your actions may be hindering it from ever happening.

You need to take into consideration that pruning can affect how a tree develops fruit. Some trees only fruit on the end of branches, at the tips, and if you are pruning a tree and removing the tips, this will obviously affect its ability to grow fruit.

As bonsai growers we are going to prune and repot our trees and do everything in our power to make them grow small and to how we want. This is the very core of bonsai, we will obviously keep our trees healthy, but at the same time this could impact how the tree could fruit, or not fruit.

Is The Fruit On A Bonsai Smaller?

If your tree does fruit it has the potential to be a full size piece of fruit, however it will probably end up smaller than usual.

The tree itself is only small due to how we treat it, the bonsai techniques are what makes the tree small, genetically the tree is the same as a full size tree.

This mean that there is nothing stopping a piece of fruit from becoming full size …well there is one thing. Bonsai trees are quite small. More importantly they have very small root balls.

This means that a bonsai may struggle to get enough resources pumped into a piece of fruit to make it full size.

If your tree does start to form fruit you will notice it will really start to become thirsty for water. It makes sense, the tree is trying to pump the fruit full of resources, as well as just sustain its usual level of water needs. This means it is going to end up using more water.

Based on the limited supply in a small tree you will usually find that the final fruit is a bit stunted, this is going to be even more noticeable if your tree is covered in fruit. If you removed all the fruit, apart from one, you may find this single one might possibly grow to a size that is more “full size”.

You also need to think about the tree and its ability to support such fruit. Fruit can be heavy so it may drop off before it becomes fully developed.

There is also potential that the tree will know its limits and not let a fruit get to big to avoid it damaging itself, however I do not think this is what happens. 

How Do Bonsai Get Fruit In Displays/Exhibitions?

I’m sure a few of you have been reading this article because you have seen pictures of trees in an exhibition with fruit on them. While some times this is fruit that has grown on the tree naturally, often it is actually just glued on.

The owner glues the fruit onto a branch at the start of the exhibition and then removes it after.

Sorry to spoil the illusion. Exhibitions are just ways to show the bonsai trees in the best possible ways, sometimes you need to help a tree a little bit and stick some fruit on. Maybe it is cheating, maybe it is art, who knows, but it can happen so don’t believe everything you see.  

Can You Eat It Fruit From A Bonsai Tree?

Yes, you can eat the fruit that grows on a bonsai tree. All you need to do is ask yourself if you are happy to eat it. If it is a fruit that is normally eaten by humans then you can eat it, if you are not sure, always check.

I would also check if you have sprayed your tree with any pesticides and fungicides. You will need to check if anything you have added to the tree could be harmful. You don’t really want to poison yourself.

Will it taste good? You will just have to find out. I would imagine not. The tree will have struggled to provide enough resources to grow the fruit, so I imagine it will not be perfect. However, if you ever do try some, let me know how it tastes!  

Should You Let A Bonsai Tree Grow Fruit?

An important question to ask yourself is if you should let your bonsai tree produce fruit.

Allowing fruit to grow can take a lot of energy and will put a lot of strain on a small tree in a pot, so you should ask yourself if you think your bonsai tree can handle this stress.

It will also depend on what you are trying to achieve with your bonsai. If you are trying to develop it, you might want to focus the trees energy into growing more branches, rather than wasting it on fruit.

There are no right or wrong answers but I always believe you should let your tree do its thing for a while, just to watch what it does and enjoy its beauty.

Are Bonsai Trees Self Pollinating?

If you are going to let your tree fruit, you should double check that this is actually possible. If you can remember back to school biology, flowers need to mix pollen from the male section to the female section of the flower. You know, like how humans work, sort of …But anyway you need this process, which is quite often assisted by insects.

You need to know if you have the right insects to do this job. Some fig trees need a specific type of wasp to pollinate it (The wasp then gets trapped inside and dies, pretty crazy. You can learn more from this video about it here)

You can often self pollinate a flower yourself, by using a cotton bud to move the pollen and transfer it to a different flower. I did this with my chilli plant, as there were no bees inside my house to do this job. 

Most flowers have both male and female systems, buts some trees may only be one gender, so they will need the opposite gender tree nearby to pollinate. A good example of this is yews. You need both a male and a female tree nearby to get pollination.  I only have one yew and there is not another one nearby so I will never get it to fruit and will never see the berries (they are not edible)

(This isn’t to be confused with the stylistic gender of your tree, you can read more about this in – What Is The Difference Between Masculine And Feminine Bonsai?)

What Bonsai Fruit Trees Do I Own?

If you are interested to see what bonsai fruit trees I have and what they have done, here is a list of them.

Apple

I grew this from seed in 2015 after eating an apple from the supermarket. It has not fruited or flowered yet.

Avocado

I grew this from seed in 2015 from a supermarket avocado. It has not flowered or fruited yet.

Lemon

I grew this from a seed from a lemon I had in 2016. It has not fruited of flowered yet.

Pomegranate

I bought a pomegranate in a supermarket in 2016 with the goal of growing the seeds. It did not take long for them to grow and I also only grew half, there was so many I just ate the second half!

It has produced one flower in 2021, but the flower quickly died and did not fruit.

Olive

I grew these from seed, but I bought the seeds from Amazon in 2016. You can’t get fresh olives here and the ones in the jar will probably not germinate.

I have also heard that olives grown from seed will not produce olives. If you want to grow olives, you need to graft a branch on that is capable of fruiting. I am not sure if this is 100% true, but it could potentially be.

Grape

In 2017 I bought a packet of grapes; they had seeds inside so I decided to grow them. I tried to grow all the seeds, but I only got 1 to grow, but I still have that tree today. It has not flowered or fruited.

Chillies

I grew a chilli from seed in 2014. (I have since accidently exposed it to frost and killed it, which is very annoying, but such is life) It flowered maybe with in the first year, and certainly a number of times throughout the following growing seasons.

It always produced fruit and I ate it. It was spicy and delicious. Each chilli was full of seeds and I could have started hundreds of new trees if I wanted.

Sometimes I removed the flowers, but a lot of the time I left them to grow so I could eat the chillies.    

Other Non-Edible Fruit Bonsai

I have a hawthorn and a yew that have not flowered or fruited any berries.

I also have a cotoneaster since 2017 that has flowered and made berries every year I have had it.

Conclusion

As you can see from my own fruit trees, it can take a while to get them to flower and fruit. It is totally possible, you just have to give the tree time and it will get to the stage of maturity when it is ready.