How Do You Know What Branches To Prune On A Bonsai?

If you are new to bonsai, pruning a tree can be really intimidating. You can be faced with hundreds of branches going in every direction and it can be hard to know where to even start, let alone what to do. 

Knowing what branches to prune back or remove isn’t too difficult, you just have to systematically go through the tree, one branch at a time and analyse what you are looking at, and while this can take a while, it does get easier the more you do it.

Just take your time and think about what you are doing and you should be fine.

The 7 principles Of Pruning Will Guide You A Lot Of The Time

I have covered the beginner principles to pruning in a different article, and to be honest, following the 7 main principle that I cover in depth there will pretty much cover everything you need. 

You can read about it here – How To Prune A Bonsai Tree – A Beginners Guide

The below table is a quick summary of the 7 principles.

1	“Cleaning Out” A Bonsai
2	Only Have One Branch Coming Out Of The Trunk At One Place
3	Branches Only Allowed To Split Into Two
4	Clean Out Branch Crotches
5	Trim Back To 2 or 3 Leaf Nodes
6	Remove Bar Branches
7	Remove Crossing Branches

If you just repeated these 7 things over and over again for a number of years, you would end up with a half decent tree.  Start at the bottom of the tree and work your way up, once branch at a time and you will be fine.

Look At The Tree As A Whole

Knowing the 7 principles of pruning will get you far, but really you need to take a step back and look at the tree as a whole. You need to get an idea of what is going on and where you want to go with it.

This does mean you need to have a understanding of how trees are generally designed, so it can be very helpful to look at some examples of good, well refined bonsai and study where their branches are, how long they are and just generally how they all interact with each other.

If you have this general understanding of design, you can use this knowledge to compare with your own tree and get an idea for what you might need to prune, or not.

Look At The Trunk

I would start by looking at your trunk. Is it what you want? Has it got enough thickness and height?

If you are happy with things, you can move on. If you feel your trunk needs some more growth, then you should probably not prune the tree. Let it grow out and let the trunk reach the level that you want before you start deciding to prune things back.

Look At The First Branches

The next thing you should look at the primary branches, which are the ones that come immediately off the trunk. Ask yourself are they in the right position and if they are the right size.

This is where you start bringing in the 7 principles I talked about above, are there any bar branches, crossing branches or more than one branch at one spot. If there is, then you need to evaluate the tree as a whole and see what makes sense to remove or shorten.

Many times it can make just as much sense to leave it, but these are the decision you need to make.

Look At The Secondary and Tertiary Branches

Lastly you want to look at what is coming off the main branches, which will be secondary and tertiary branches. This is where you really start to use the 7 principles, just work your way from the primary branch out to the very tips, evaluating everything as you go.

Look At How Everything Interacts

Going through an individual branch is fairly easily, it becomes a little trickery when you have to take everything into consideration.

You want the main branches to move away from the main trunk and start to form pads of foliage, but you need to see how each pad interacts with the one next to it, or the one above it. It’s these groups of foliage that build up the tree and how you place these is ultimately how you end up with the style of tree that you want.

It can be really helpful to look at really refined Japanese maples or juniper and see this in action. You can see how one main branch comes off the trunk and divides out into a foliage pad …but pay attention to how all these pads interact with each other.

 If you can start to get an understanding of how this works it is really going to help you work out what branches you need to keep and what ones are not adding any value to the final design.

Just Prune The Tips

Once you have established the general shape of your tree, or even if you are not sure about a certain branch, but you want to wait and see what happens, you can develop things by just pruning the outer tips.

Most of the shoots are going to be out at the end of the branches and you can prune them all back to 2 or 3 nodes as mentioned in the 7 techniques. Just keep doing this and the tree will really start to get dense and take shape.

However, you will have to come back later and go through the whole branch and assess it. There will be things crossing, or multiple shoots in one place, and again, the 7 principles will allow you to sort all that out. 

Prune Anything That Is Extremely Long

Another easy method you can use is to just prune back anything that looks too long. This is again going to be mostly the longer outer shoots and you can prune them back to 2 or 3 leaf nodes.

This alone will keep things fairly under control but again you will need to go through the entire branch at some point and use the 7 principles to make the tree actually look more like a bonsai.

You can just prune anything that is extremely long if you are trying let the tree grow. Let it grow out all season then in late winter come in and just prune everything back and let it go again all season.

I like doing this with seedlings and after a couple of years you end up with a tree that is full of branches, some good, other maybe not so much, but either way there is options and in general everything is pretty under control and can easily be trained into an actual bonsai from this point. 

Prune Off Any Thing That Is Dead

An easy victory is to just prune off anything off that is dead. You should be able to tell what parts have died back and these will often add no value to the tree, so you may as well remove them.

Although, sometimes you might want to keep some deadwood, but this really depends on the species and the look you are going for.

Usually dead wood would be made from quite large branches, rather than just little shoots that didn’t make it, so it can certainly be easy to go around the tree and remove anything small that has died.   

(You can read more about – Frequently Asked Questions About – Pruning Your Bonsai)

Conclusion

Hopefully this makes things a little clearer and you feel more confident about what branches you should be cutting on your bonsai.

Just follow the main 7 steps to pruning, while also considering how each branch interacts with those near it, and how the whole tree as a whole looks. Just take your time and evaluate things and it will start to become easier and you will grow in confidence.

(You can read more about – Pruning Aftercare Advice For Your Bonsai)