Is Snowberry A Good Tree For Bonsai?

The snowberry is a part of the honeysuckle family and is native to North America. It is a tough, small shrub that is well known for its white berries.

It is a common garden shrub as it can grow in pretty much any conditions and its white berries give gardens a lovely pop of colour in the autumn.

It is not often seen in bonsai, but I have found it to be a pretty interesting tree to grow and I feel it should be used more often.

I have been growing one for a few years and you can see its development in my Snowberry Bonsai Progression.

Is Snowberry A Good Species for Bonsai?

A snowberry can be good for bonsai, but it is not perfect. It has a lot of good things going for it, but there also a few problems with it.

It is very tough, so it is easy to care for and can take a lot of work. It also responds well to the work and has naturally small leaves. This is all great for bonsai.

The problem is that it can send out a lot of very long straight shoots and these can also take a while to thicken. This will always be a problem but it does not mean they are an impossible tree to bonsai.

Starting with a good trunk is really going to help you. Trying to take a cutting and hope it thickens over time isn’t really going to work; they are a small shrub, so they do not really thicken much naturally.

This means you are probably best to keep the tree small. Unless you happen to find a massive trunk, these are always going to be a small bonsai.

Is Snowberry Foliage Good For Bonsai?

The foliage on snowberries is pretty good for bonsai. It is naturally pretty small and it will reduce down in size through pruning.

Naturally they can have quite long internodes, which is common in trees that send out long straight shoots. However, through pruning you can get this down in size and you can have very short internodes.   

Is A Snowberries Growth Rate Good For Bonsai?

Snowberries grow fast and aggressively. It is natural for them to have long, thin and straight branches. This means you will need to be pruning them a lot to keep this in check. You can very easily loose the shape of your tree if you let it grow out of control.

Response To Pruning

They respond very well to pruning. They will send new shoots out where you have pruned and the new growth will be smaller and finer. This is exactly what you want from a bonsai.

Back Budding

Snowberries will also back bud like crazy. Every time you prune they will send out back buds as well as the buds where you have pruned. This means you need to be constantly pruning away new shoots that are growing in places you don’t want.

It will also send out multiple shoots in one place, so it can get very messy very quickly. I say this is problem, but it’s a good problem to have, so long as you are on top of it. If you just ignore this you will very quickly find multiple branches growing one spot causing ugly knuckles of growth. 

Since the growth can be long and leggy, these back buds are very helpful. You can reduce long shoots back to these new buds that are closer to the trunk.

Ramification

You can build a lot of ramification with snowberries. The large amount of back buds a long with the small leaves and short internodes means you can really have some dense compact branching which is exactly what you want from a bonsai.

Is A Snowberries Styling Ability Good For Bonsai?

As snowberry is a small bush, it doesn’t really have any natural “tree” shape. This means it is pretty much a blank canvas and you can style it in whatever direction you feel like.

I would assess your material on an individual bases to work out what style is going to work best for it, but really there are a number of possibilities that can work.

Wiring

You can wire snowberries, but it is tough work. The long and straight growth is quite brittle and can be very difficult to bend. You really need to wire branches into position when they are still quite young and have the ability to move more easily.

Luckily you can really develop these trees through clip and grow, but you may find some wire helps move some branches into the right area.

Is A Snowberries Fall Colours Good For Bonsai?

The snowberries autumn leaf change is really nothing special. Its green leaves just loose vibrancy and sort of go yellow and drop off. It’s very forgettable.

It is at this time of year that you would get the white berries growing. The problem is that they grow at the tips of the branches, which you will probably have pruned back a number of times throughout the season. This means you will probably never get the berries unless you allow the tree to grow out. The problem is, if you do this, your tree looses it shape and just becomes a bush with long leggy growth. 

Is A Snowberries Winter Silhouette Good For Bonsai?

The fact that the snowberry is deciduous means you get to look at the winter silhouette. This is always helpful on a tree that likes to back bud a lot. With all the leaves gone you can really see the branch structures and spot any shoots that are growing in the wrong place and need removed.

Is Snowberry Bark Good For Bonsai?

The bark on snowberries is pretty thin. It is almost like paper and it can start to crack and peel off which can look really cool and almost looks like plates of bark that are cracking open.

The tree grows in a very gnarly and craggy way, so this paper effect looks even more interesting and it makes hiding wounds pretty easy. 

Deadwood Opportunities

Deadwood can work on snowberries. A whole dead branch will not, but little jins or dead sections of the trunk can work.  As the tree sends out lots of straight long shots from the trunk you may have to cut these back and it is almost more interesting to leave these as little stumps.

I have a section of my trunk that is dead. I have not done any work to it yet and it already looks very cool.

Are Snowberry Roots Good For Bonsai?

The roots on snowberries are great for bonsai. They are just like the top, very aggressive growers and can take a lot of work.

You can really hack at the roots and the tree will not even notice and just keep on sending out more roots. You can get quite fine roots, which is excellent, but I have found the roots just sort of shoot out of the base of the trunk.

They don’t seem to naturally flow and I have not really noticed any flare or taper forming like I would see on other trees. Hopefully in time this will change, but for now, the transition from trunk to roots isn’t the best.

Is Snowberry Easy To Care For As Bonsai?

Snowberries are really tough. You can’t really go wrong. They will grow in all sorts of substandard conditions so being used as bonsai should be a real delight for them.

You can read more information in my Snowberry Bonsai Care Guide.

Conclusion

Snowberry is a tree that we should be using more in bonsai. It grows fast and responds well to techniques. Its long straight growth isn’t perfect, but there are ways around this. The same goes for its roots. They may not have any taper, but they can be fine and you can easily get the tree into a shallow pot.

Snowberries are not the best tress for bonsai, but I feel they offer enough that they should be considered more often, especially beginners who could learn a lot from them and would get a lot of opportunities to work on them due to their fast growth.