The ficus is a large family of trees, many of which make great bonsai. Many times the ficus will be referred to as a banyan tree because of the impressive aerial roots that develop on many trees. Banyan is not really a species of tree, but rather the way in which some trees grow with their spread out growth supported by columns of aerial roots. Even so, some ficus do carry the moniker "banyan" such as the ficus microcarpa, the Chinese Banyan.

Which brings us to my tree.

This is my first ficus and one of my favorite trees. It has sentimental value to me. It is a ficus microcarpa and, believe it or not, I found it at a Home Depot garden center. It was in a huge pot that bore little resemblance to a bonsai pot and was suffering in a terrible excuse for soil.

I didn't know enough to take it out of that poor excuse for soil at first, although I knew enough to remove the glued on rocks it had. No matter how nice it may look, it is a killer for the tree. If your tree has it, remove it right away.

For about a year it grew in that pot and suffered the indignity of being the victim of my inexperience. But if you are going to choose a tree based on it's ability to take abuse, you can't pick a better tree than this. Lucky me.

Pay no mind to the tacky, pink wires. I had no idea where to get decent wire at the time and used wire from the electrical department at my local hardware store. It actually worked very well, but this is strictly for the growing bench. I would never show my tree like this... erm, except now I guess.

This is just about what it looked like when I first got it. By this time I have pruned it back quite a bit, but the branch structure was what you see here. I didn't really know it then, but this tree had a long way to go.

Here you can see the tree about a year later. It's grown quite a bit and I've cut away large portions of it in order to grow out better branches. You would never know to see it here, but this was not much more than just a trunk last year.

Whew, it's come a long way, but there is still much to do. In this oversized pot, the tree will continue to grow vigorously. You can see that some of the branches are being re-grown. There is better wire in place now (thanks Paul), and the aerial root is being grafted to the base where it will eventually merge and add to it's appearance. I will probably cut away the upper portion of that root at that point and use it for something else.