Is A Lemon Tree Good For Bonsai?

Lemons are often found growing in tropic climates, but if you take the seeds from a lemon, you can grow them anywhere in the world.

Lemons are easy to grow in pots and they are often sold in garden centres as ornamental trees, but they can also be used for bonsai. They are not the most common trees in bonsai, but they can still be popular. Quite often they are grown inside, especially over winter as they cannot handle the low winter temperatures.

You can actually use any citrus fruit, they are all pretty similar and you can easily confuse them if you see them without fruit growing on them. I just happened to have a lemon and decided to grow one from seed, but I would probably have got similar results from any citrus fruit. You can follow the development of my tree in my Lemon Bonsai Progression.

Is Lemon A Good Species for Bonsai?

Lemon can be a good species for bonsai. It is not the most suited for it, but it is not the worst. It has plenty of positives going for it. They are easy to care for and with the right techniques you can end up with something decent.

The growth can be long straight and thick at times and you are probably better off having a bigger tree to accommodate this, but you can get ramification and you can get the leaf size down. If you keep the tree larger you can really end up with something cool and really in scale.

If you try and look for really good examples of lemon trees there are not many. They are all quite young or underdeveloped. This doesn’t mean you can’t achieve this, it just means no one has really decided they are worth the long term battle.

Is Lemon Foliage Good For Bonsai?

Lemon leaves are great, if you rub them they smell like lemon, but this doesn’t really help us with bonsai.

You will also usually find a thorn at the base of the leaves, some of these can get quite big and they are certainly sharp. You can just prune these off, which will save your hands from a lot of painful spikes.

Leaf Size

The leaves can be slightly large at times but with correct pruning you can actually get them to reduce quite a lot. This isn’t always reliable and sometimes they will just send out a huge leaf that will need to be removed to keep everything in scale.

This is one of the reasons why they are better suited as a larger tree.

Internode Length

Lemons can often send out shoots that long, straight and thick. Everything about them is awful, especially the internode length. However, a lot of shoots have a manageable length and these will reduce with correct pruning. 

Is A Lemons Growth Rate Good For Bonsai?

Given the right conditions lemon will grow quite quickly. Since most of us are growing them in pots and in slightly cooler climates than they prefer they can be a bit slow to get going which is not ideal, especially as they work better as larger trees for bonsai.

If you can manage their growth as best as you can, you will get them to speed up. I use a grow light and it certainly helps things. They also need to put a lot of growth on to get thick, so if you can, use the biggest pot you have. It will really help get things developed a lot faster and will get the size to where you it need to be.

Response To Pruning

Being a fruit tree they will respond well to pruning and you can take them right back to almost nothing without any problems.

Back Budding

Lemons will back bud very easily. If you take them right back to a stump they will push new buds all over. You need to be careful though. A lot of the time the tree will react to a hard pruning by sending out long, course shoots that are not really ideal. You will also find that they will back bud in places where there is already branches, so you can very easily end up with knuckles in places from too much growth in one area.

Ramification

Ramification can be achieved, but it can be hard to get it super tight and compacted. The lager leaves and internodes can be reduced, but often the growth can be a little course, so it is hard to keep very small. If you aim for a bigger tree, your ramification will be very in proportion.

Is A Lemon Styling Ability Good For Bonsai?

As a small ever green fruit tree, a lemon bonsai is going to be better suited to styles that are more common with broadleaf evergreen, such as informal upright. However, you are free to take the tree in any direction you feel will work.

Wiring

Lemons tend to want to grow in an upward fashion. Most of the lemon bonsais I see, my own included, suffer from this and would look far better with the branches lowered slightly, which you will need wire to achieve 

I would suggest you wire your main structure and then focus on clip and grow to build your branches out in the direction you need. You will then probably need to use guide wire to lower these branches down at a later date.

Is A Lemons Fall Colours Good For Bonsai?

Lemons are evergreen so they do not give you any change throughout the year. You may notice the leaves can go yellow towards the end of the season, but this is normally a sign that their soil is no longer in a good condition and they will probably need repotted soon. If you lemon leaves turn yellow it’s a sign there could be a problem, it’s not a sign that autumn has arrived.

This also means you will not get to see a winter silhouette with your lemons, but that is fine. There are plenty of trees that are every green and work really well as bonsai.

Is A Lemons Bark Good For Bonsai?

Once lemon trees get some age you will start to see striping on the trunk. It reminds me of a tigers strips and can found on the bark of all citrus fruit. It can also take a while for the branches to turn woody and they may remain green for a number of years.

Deadwood Opportunities

Lemon is not the type of tree that should have deadwood. If you had a very thick trunk some carving could work quite well, but really it will depend on the individual tree and the style you are going for. 

Are A Lemons Roots Good For Bonsai?

The roots on lemon trees are quite thick and fleshy. However, they do smell like lemon which is always nice.

The roots are not too bad, but they are going to be better suited for a larger tree. I have pruned them quite aggressively and had no problems, but I know others have done this and had tress die. This is where timing and after care are key.

You need to wait a litter later into spring to repot a lemon. They prefer warmth and light, so repotting to early will be too much of a shock for them; you want to make sure there is no risk of cold weather after the repot.

I usually prune my branch es back quite hard at the end of winter and it can take them a little while to start budding out after this. I find by the time they are sending shoots out, it should be safe enough to repot them without any problems. If you add good aftercare on top of this, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Is A Lemon Easy To Care For As Bonsai

Lemons are fairly easy to care for. Maybe they like a little bit more heat and sun than your average plant, but over all they are pretty easy. They so also like the soil to be mildly acidic, but that isn’t too difficult to sort out.

If they can be sold in garden centres to the general public as ornamental trees then they can’t be too hard to care for. You can read more information in my Lemon Bonsai Care Guide.

Conclusion

Lemons can be used for bonsai and you can get some okay result with them. They are not the best suited trees, but you can still work with them.

If you have one as part of a wider collection than can be pretty cool, but if you are only wanting a small number of tress, I would probably focus on something else that will give you better overall results.