Bonsai of Zelkova in hand-written pot.
Safe delivery in a wooden crate.
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Height: 25 cm (excluding pot)
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Width: 30 cm
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Trunk: 9.5 cm
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Pot: 6 x 15 x 10 cm
Photos taken in March 2026
About this Zelkova bonsai
This Zelkova bonsai is a Japanese keyaki, the tree that more than any other defines the broom style. Look at the silhouette and you can see why: a straight, pale trunk that splits into a fan of ever-finer branches, building toward a rounded crown of small serrated leaves. In summer it is a soft green dome; in winter, bare, it becomes a fine tracery of twigs that shows every year of patient work. It sits here in a hand-written pot, the calligraphy on the ceramic echoing the tree’s East-Asian roots.
The Zelkova is grown for ramification above all. Few species divide so willingly into the dense, even network of branches that the broom form depends on, and the smooth grey bark stays clean and bright as the trunk thickens. The leaves turn through yellow and warm orange before they fall, so the tree carries a different mood in each season.
The classic broom-style tree
Zelkova serrata grows wild across Japan, Korea and eastern China, where the full-size keyaki is a revered shade and timber tree. In bonsai it has become the standard subject for hokidachi, the upright broom, and a well-built Zelkova is often used to teach what good ramification really means. This is a deciduous tree with real structure, the kind that reads as well in a winter outline as in full leaf.
About this specimen
The photographs show the exact tree and pot you receive, the hand-written pot included. Every Zelkova branches in its own way, so the spread of the crown and the division of the twigs here belong to this specimen alone.
A broom like this is best seen straight on at eye level, where the symmetry of the crown and the rise of the trunk can be read at a glance. It is a tree that looks complete in any season, and never quite the same twice.
