DragonsEye
carnivorous plants of the world -- unite!
Dragon, Do you grow bonsai?
LOL I have played around with bonsai, Acro. But, alas! I found that I often lack the patience and vision to do well at it. Doesn't prevent me from being filled with awe and admiration for beautifully bonsai'ed trees though! Someday, perhaps, I will put forth the effort to try again.
I didn't know that kusamono & shitakusa were dwarfed plants. Aren't they just plants that are selected for their appropriate (small) size?
There is very little dwarfing that can be done to many of the plants used, which is why they usually outgrow their usefulness in the work and need replaced. Take grasses, for instance. Even should you find a grass that naturally stays short, you still have the issue of it spreading beyond the space you wish it to take up -- and in the case of a smaller kusamono or shitakusa piece, there isn't a lot of space to start with. (Have you ever experienced the "joy" of trying to keep grass from spreading from the lawn into a flowerbed or vegetable garden? Grass is a tenacious WEED.)
You are quite correct that plants which naturally remain very small are the preferred material, but
1) sometimes there are no minis that have the "look" one is going for;
2) sometimes suitable minis are unavailable -- whether do to scarcity or simply far too expensive for what one can afford; and/or
3) when all is said and done, plants grow ... whether up or spreading outwards.
With plants like trees/shrubs that have a single main stem, root and branch pruning can be done. But how does one go about pruning a plant like a grass or fern (even a super short variety) that spreads outwards often by runners? And if you should desire to incorporate more than one species of plant (which is not uncommon in kusamono & shitakusa), how do you prevent one species from muscling out another in the long term? Generally speaking you can't. So at some point the piece needs to be dismantled and redone. (Which is not always a bad thing ... one tastes may change over time or a new plant or rock, et cetera may inspire one to do something different with the piece.)
And . . . Orchid Lovers, check this out:
Orchids as Bonsai (or would this be kusamono or shitakusa?) : http://www.aos.org/Default.aspx?id=431
Hard to tell from the pictures, but I believe that the 1st and 3rd ones in the left hand column would be considered "saikei" -- miniature landscapes. The others could be used as shitakusa but I would suspect they would more likely be kusamono (centerpieces in their own right as opposed to as living décor to augment a bonsai display).