How Do You Build Ramification On A Bonsai?

Ramification is a word you hear a lot in bonsai, but a lot of people do not really understand what it means or how you go about getting.

Having ramification is basically what makes your bonsai tree look like a full size tree, which really means you have a lot of branches that get smaller as they move away from the trunk. Luckily it’s pretty easy to achieve this with some simple techniques and time.

What Is Ramification?

Ramification is simply just having lots of branches, but its more about how the branches are structured.

If you look at a full size tree it will have a number of large branches and these subdivide into smaller and smaller branches until finally you end up out at the branch tips where there are small twigs and of course the leaves. This is ramification and the more subdivisions and change in the branch size the better.

If there was just one big branch and then the leaves all came off this at the end, it wouldn’t look as good. There would be no ramification in this instant.

Why Do We Want Ramification On Bonsai?

The goal with bonsai is to get your tree to look like a miniature version of a full size tree, which means that we also wants lots of branches that subdivide out, getting smaller and smaller.

This just makes a tree look much older and more powerful. If you think about a young tree, it is not structured in this way, it might just have a few branches and a little bit of subdivision but it is nothing like a older tree.   

A tree without ramification is just not that impressive and we all want our bonsai to look impressive. While ramification is not the only thing you need for a good tree, it certainly helps a lot.     

How Do You Get Ramification?

The process is pretty simple. You just need to keep pruning your tree …over over a long time. Its easy, but a slow process. 

If you know the correct way to prune a tree you should find that every time you do prune, your tree will become a little more ramified when it grows back.

So long as you cut a branch back properly, it should send out at least two new shoots. This means you have made this one branch subdivide into two. The next time you prune this branch, you will cut back these two shoots, which will again regrow two new shoots each. Now you have 4 shoots. You just keep doing this and very soon you will have multiple shoots all stemming from the one original branch.

You also do not need to worry about making the new shoots smaller; the tree will do this by itself.  Basically when you cut a branch, the energy that was going into this branch will usually be split equally between the new shoots. This means the new shoots are roughly half the size of the original branch.

This is how you go from a thick branch all the way down to very fine branching, each subdivide will make things smaller and smaller which is exactly what we want. 

(You can read more about – How To Prune A Bonsai Tree – A Beginners Guide)

Leaf Size and Internode Length Matters

Pruning will build the majority of the ramification, but after factors that you can’t control will also play their part, mainly the leaf size and internode length.

The internode length is the amount of distance between each bud along the branch and you cannot really control this. Some species are just better suited for bonsai and are easier to ramify as they are genetically designed to have shorter internodes and smaller leaves.

If we look at a tree like a Chinese elm, they naturally have very small internodes and they will generally get shorter and shorter with pruning and their leaves will reduce in size too. The opposite is true for trees like a horse chestnut, whos internode length just seems to stay the same  and their leaf size does not reduce much too.   

You can prune these two trees the same amount and get as many subdivisions in the branching, but the Chinese elm will always look better in the end. Its smaller leaves and shorter internodes is going to allow the tree to really go from a thick branch down to a very very fine branch tip, where as the horse chestnuts ramification is going to be very chunky and just not reduce down in size in the same way.

The Roots Matter Too

While the majority of ramification is built through pruning, the roots of the tree play their part too. You will often find that the state of the roots is reflected in the top half of the tree.

Usually this is seen through the health. A healthy root system means the top of the tree is healthy, but it can also relate to the ramification too. If you have a small, compact dense rootball, you will usually see this on the top of the tree too.

A tree with large thick roots tends to have a lot of strength, so it will push a lot of energy into the branches, making them large and thick too. The opposite of this is of course if you have a rootball with lots of division and fine roots, the top of your tree tends to reflect this with fine branching and small leaves.

You have to see your tree as one whole system, the roots and the top of your tree are completely linked, so if you want one to be ramified, you need to make sure both are.

It Takes Time To Get Good Ramification

I think it is important to remember that ramification takes times to build. It will take a number of years to build out the structure and get everything to reduce in size.

It is easy to get, it just takes time. Just work on your tree consistently and keep it healthy and you will be rewarded with a small dense canopy that is very well ramified.

This is also why it is so prized in bonsai, it shows time and effort has gone into the tree. It is not something you can get quickly, so it is valuable.

Conclusion

As you can now see ramification is important for your bonsais over all look and it is easily achieved by repeatedly pruning your tree and keeping it healthy.  

Just take your time and your tree will develop all the ramification you need to have a great tree.