Museum Donor and Buttonwood Queen Dies at 91

The National Bonsai Foundation is saddened to hear that bonsai artist Mary Madison, a dear friend to NBF and donor to the U.S. National Arboretum’s collection at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, passed away July 28 at 91 years old. 

Known as the Buttonwood Queen for her revered work on buttonwoods, a species native to the United States, Mary was an icon in the bonsai world. She grew up in Florida, often traveling to the natural beauty displayed in the Florida Keys, which sparked her passion for horticulture. Her first taste of bonsai came in the form of photos from a former boyfriend who served in Japan after World War II who sent her pictures of bonsai, which spurred her to try tree training herself. Mary ended up studying under two world-renowned bonsai masters, John Naka and Ben Oki, until their deaths. 

Throughout her more than 60 years in bonsai, Mary served as a mentor to many rising and established bonsai artists, including Ryan Neil. In a moving tribute to Mary, Bonsai Mirai student and deadwood artist David Cutchin wrote, “Mary exemplified what it is to be a good person. She treated everyone with kindness and humility, her resolve was to do what’s right and forgive regardless of the situation… Quitting wasn’t a part of her vocabulary. She was a catalyst of human decency, hard work, and love to anyone she befriended.”

Bonsai Societies of Florida recently named their annual native species award the “Mary Madison Award” to pay homage to her immense contributions to the art of bonsai. 

Museum Volunteer LeeAnn Duling and First Curator’s Apprentice Sophia Osorio repotting one of Mary’s buttonwoods.

Two of Mary’s trees reside at the Museum, one being a buttonwood she donated in 1990. She was also the original collector of a buttonwood that ended up in the office of the Central Intelligence Agency before they gifted the tree to the national collection in 2019. 

NBF is grateful to have often crossed paths with Mary, as well as for her leadership as one of the first women in bonsai. 

“Mary embodied the spirit and authenticity of the Everglades and, with her warm and engaging personality, she opened our eyes to the beauty of tropical bonsai,” NBF Chair Emeritus Felix Laughlin said. “Like her good friend John Naka, she will always be remembered and celebrated as an iconic and beloved teacher who inspired the world of bonsai.”

NBF Chair Emeritus Jack Sustic said Mary’s kindness and eagerness to share her bonsai knowledge and passion inspired everyone she met.

“It was such an honor for me to care for Mary’s buttonwood while serving as curator,” Sustic said. “Mary's buttonwood in the North American Collection is a quiet testament to her love and passion for bonsai and will serve as a living legacy to a life dedicated to this wonderful art."

Historical Tree Spotlight / Donors and Their Trees – Al Nelson and His Coast Live Oak

Some bonsai just command presence. Such is the case for a coast live oak, or Quercus agrifolia, donated by Al Nelson to the collections at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. 

Nelson has become an expert in the care and training of coast live oak bonsai. He also has an oak at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in California. 

Nelson was first introduced to bonsai in the late 1970s during his lunch hour one day while working as a salesman. John Naka was giving a demonstration at a California Bonsai Society event, and Nelson was immediately hooked. He already gardened in his spare time, so he bought Naka’s newly published book on bonsai techniques and taught himself. 

“I attended various bonsai shows and took pictures of every single tree on black and white digital film, studied the photos and put them in a book,” Nelson said. 

After getting some feedback on his bonsai, he decided to take a hands-on lesson. Nelson began studying under Harry Hirao in the early 1980s and eventually became Naka’s student – a fantastic partnership that would last about 20 years – and joined his study group Nam Pu Kai. 

Nelson, Naka and Hirao spent many years collecting bonsai and scholar rocks together at Bixby Ranch in Santa Barbara County. There, Nelson fell in love with California oaks, which became his favorite specimen to work with and study. He has since collected hundreds of trees from the region. 

“They’re such magnificent trees to me because they struggle to survive,” he said. “They get blown over and all contorted.” 

The coast live oak at the Museum almost stayed hidden among the other gnarled branches and twisted trunks of Bixby Ranch. On one scouting expedition, Nelson spotted the tree, which was originally about 20 feet high with a beautiful base, but he decided digging it out would be too much work. After hunting around, he passed the tree again and gave in – he dug through rocky, tough soil for almost five hours to pull it from the ground. 

Nelson cut off the tap root, which was one-and-a-half times the tree’s height. He covered its base with wet rags and moss because, he said, the tree thirsts for water without the tap root. 

“The tree won’t get the water it needs, and you don’t want to dry it out,” Nelson said.

 Nelson with the coast live oak in 2005 (left) and 2016 (right)

The oak didn’t have a leaf on it when he brought it home, but a few sprouted after a couple of months, so he drove the tree to Naka’s house to see if it had bonsai potential. 

“John was really impressed,” Nelson said. “He said it was a magnificent tree and that one day it should be in the U.S. National Arboretum in D.C.”

Thirty years later, Naka’s proclamation came true. The oak has been housed in the North American Pavilion since 2016. Nelson has shown this oak at multiple demonstrations and, as the bonsai was 25 inches at the base at one point, Nelson had to lift it on and off tables with a hydraulic pump cart. 

He said one of the most common accolades for his coast live oak is how many “fronts” it has – the oak doesn’t necessarily need to be positioned a certain way to look like an excellent bonsai. Instead of selling his beautiful specimen, Nelson gives his bonsai to mentees or established institutions like the Museum.

“I want my trees to have a good home because it’s not about the money,” he said. “Even my students have their names on copper tags on my trees for when I croak. But I wanted to see this one in the Museum, especially since Naka praised it so long ago.” 

Former Curator Jack Sustic (left) with Nelson and the oak

Over the years Nelson has learned much about coast live oaks, like how they don’t grow well with wiring or that the branches grow down rather than out or up. 

Museum Curator Michael James said staff have been caring for the tree based on Nelson’s recommendations. The bonsai is kept in the Museum’s temperate greenhouse during the winter to simulate its native climate.

The oak receives a high volume of water and Miracid fertilizer, and the tree is almost completely defoliated after a healthy flush grows out in the spring.

“We might leave some leaves in the inner portions in weak areas and at the base of shoots,” James said. “We cut all the elongated shoots off and anything that is too straight or is not going in the direction that we want.”

He added that the haphazard drooping and arching branches seen on wild oaks can look incredible and he is trying to maintain a “billowy” appearance when training the tree. 

Nelson said he is thrilled that his oak at the Museum – his favorite bonsai – is looking strong. 

“I’m so happy it’s getting some nice and tender loving care,” he said.

Museum Donors & Their Trees: Dr. Yee-sun Wu

The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum is home to impressive trees from collectors and masters around the world. Among that amalgam of donors is Dr. Yee-sun Wu, one of the most prominent penjing connoisseurs and stylists. 

Dr. Wu was raised in a family that had practiced penjing for generations. He was born the eldest of 13 brothers and sisters in the Guangdong province of China. To support his family during the Great Depression, Dr. Wu started a bank in Hong Kong called Wing Lung Money Exchange – “Wing Lung” meaning “long-lasting harvest” or “good business.” 

The organization has grown over the decades into a multi-story, highly respected business in central Hong Kong and Kowloon now known as Wing Lung Bank. But Dr. Wu retired from the bank business at the end of World War II after his health declined and he was forced to rest.

During this period, he devoted all of his time to studying traditional penjing, creating a new persona for himself as “Man Lung,” or “scholar-farmer.” In 1967 in Kowloon, Dr. Wu and a few friends created the Man Lung Garden to display trees and serve as a forum for discussion about penjing. The Chinese government eventually acquired the land in the 1970s to build a railway station, but the garden was established at the Hong Kong Baptist University again in 2000.

In 1968, Dr. Wu printed 10,000 copies of his book the Man Lung Garden Artistic Pot Plants, his international term for penjing, to discuss the features of the garden and the ideology, history and celebration of artistic pot plants. 

He was one of six honorees at the Fuku-Bonsai Center International Honor Role in 1990. 

Dr. Wu, who died in 2005, is survived by 13 children and almost 40 grandchildren and great grandchildren in Hong Kong. 

Traditional styling 

Former NBF President Felix Laughlin said servicemen returning from their stations in Japan after World War II brought bonsai knowledge back to the United States. But he said many people didn’t realize that the tradition of penjing, the Chinese word for bonsai, could be traced back hundreds of years to China. 

Dr. Wu popularized traditional penjing, in the Lingnan style, throughout the Western world. Laughlin said Japanese bonsai artists often rely on wire to place branches in different positions, repeatedly replacing the wire as it cuts into the wood. Penjing artists like Dr. Wu tend to use the “clip and grow” technique, pruning again and again to determine branch placement, he said.

“You can tell bonsai have been heavily influenced by human care and training, while penjing are much wilder looking and free form,” Laughlin said. 

 Read more about the differences in the art form through our interview with Zhao Qingquan.

Dr. Wu’s trees

The penjing master curated a collection of more than 300 trees, which he donated to various institutions across the world. One can view Dr. Wu’s works in collections in Canada, Hong Kong, China and the United States. 

Former U.S. National Arboretum Director Dr. John Creech was familiar with Dr. Wu’s excellent penjing collection. He sent Col. John Hinds, a retired military officer who was heavily involved in the bonsai community, to visit Dr. Wu in Hong Kong to inform him about the plans to curate a collection in the United States. 

At first, Dr. Wu was impressed with the idea but thought his tropical trees would be better maintained on the West Coast, where the climate is more similar to Hong Kong and wouldn’t have cold winters like Washington, D.C. In 1983, Museum volunteer Janet Lanman wrote to Dr. Wu to renew the request that he display penjing at the Arboretum, assuring him that they could provide adequate winter protection for his trees. 

In July 1986, the Arboretum received 31 penjing from Hong Kong – 24 from Dr. Wu and seven from his colleague Shu-ying Lui. Dr. Wu provided a generous monetary gift for NBF and the Arboretum to construct the Yee-sun Wu Chinese Pavilion and even sent over some workers from Hong Kong to help with the details of the project. 

Although the Museum remains closed to protect staff and visitors during the spread of COVID-19, you can spot Dr. Wu’s trees online under our Chinese collection.

Bonsai Donors & Their Trees: Haruo “Papa” Kaneshiro

Kaneshiro works on a juniper group planting on a volcanic slab in Seattle, July 1984. Photo: ABS Bonsai Journal

When Jane Nakama reflects on the momentous legacy her father Haruo “Papa” Kaneshiro left behind, she most fondly remembers the people she met during his impressive life as a bonsai master.

Whether she traveled alongside her father to another part of the world or helped her parents entertain fellow bonsai lovers, including those who started as strangers, Nakama met wonderful artists from Europe, Australia and Asia and beyond.

“The bonsai community is filled with just above-and-beyond good people, and I totally appreciate that connection with people even today, 25, 30 years after dad’s passing,” she said. “It’s mind boggling to think all that connecting happened by word of mouth. It’s just amazing what bonsai brought to their lives.”

Christened “Papa” by the bonsai community for his father-like persona, Kaneshiro is touted for his unselfish and inclusive teaching and lifestyle. Kaneshiro was one of the founding members of the North American Bonsai Federation, a branch of the World Bonsai Friendship Federation.

But Nakama said her father didn’t truly develop his bonsai artistry until his mid-40s. In fact, Kaneshiro spent much of his early life working in restaurants and retired in his early 50s.

He met his wife, Masako, while working for her older brother who ran a fine dining and dancing restaurant. Nakama said her father had been waiting tables at elegant hotels in Hawaii, but he decided to open his own restaurant where his wife ran the front and waited tables as he baked pies and made soups from scratch with a wood-burning stove. 

“He’d purchase these logs, place them in the back of the restaurant and his friends would come over and chop them to fit the oven,” she said. 

Nakama said Kaneshiro’s interest in bonsai first sprouted when he was younger and traveled every so often to visit a friend who had bonsai in their backyard. But he really explored his passion for the art after he retired from being a restaurant owner and started subbing as a manager at an upscale restaurant when the current manager would go on vacation.

The six Kaneshiro siblings and their mother Masako at dinner to celebrate the dedication of the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s Haruo Kaneshiro Tropical Conservatory in 1993. Photo from Jane Nakama.

Kaneshiro’s Teaching Style

Nakama noted that there was an absence of organized classes or demonstrations when Kaneshiro was learning and first teaching the art of bonsai, so he had to order textbooks from Japan. 

“He was really self taught through experience,” she said. 

But her father’s influence as a master did not hinge on rigid teaching plans of bonsai rituals and traditions as an exact science with strict styling rules. Papa Kaneshiro believed that, just as every person is different, every plant is different; therefore bonsai should be each person’s own expression of how they think a tree should look in nature. 

“He shared a lot of this philosophy, too, so I think that’s why bonsai flourished in Hawaii,” Nakama said. “He tried to emulate nature in its most natural forms. He always said, ‘The plant will tell you how it wants to grow – you just guide it.’” 

After Kaneshiro passed, his widow Masako donated many plants to the National Bonsai Foundation, and an auction on the family’s property raised more than $10,000 to fund the creation of the Haruo Kaneshiro Tropical Conservancy at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. 

“I’m very grateful that Mom and Dad were into bonsai as much as they were,” she said. “It was more than a shared hobby – the people we met were just incredible and changed their lives forever.”

One of Papa’s trees at our Museum: a Chinese Banyan. Read more about the bonsai in our Historical Tree Spotlight.

Working Under Papa Kaneshiro

David Fukumoto, the owner of Fuku-Bonsai Cultural Center in Hawaii, said he was lucky to have Papa Kaneshiro as both a friend and a mentor who defended his amateur bonsai efforts. 

Fukumoto said Kaneshiro understood the differences between the horticultural and ethnic cultural principles that dominate "traditional Japanese bonsai" as well as the greater Hawaiian multi-cultural values and tropical trees.

“He was a gentle non-conformist who politely praised everyone's bonsai efforts and did not try to impose his values on anyone,” Fukumoto said. “Because of him, Hawaii bonsai is family oriented and the friendships are probably more significant.”

Many bonsai teachers who came to Hawaii taught training techniques like cutting off aerial roots, creating  single trunk and training flat branch tiers to adhere to bonsai “rules” codified in the 1950s. Papa Kaneshiro trained his black pines in this manner, but he trained his other bonsai with “natural style,” Fukumoto said.  

When Japanese bonsai artists were given opportunities to teach bonsai in Hawaii, they tended to train ficus banyan bonsai by cutting off aerial roots, creating only a single trunk, and training flatten tiers of branches.  

“He encouraged each of us to follow natural tree structure, to be creative and create beautiful potted plants,” Fukumoto said. “Although bonsai was a large part of their lives, the Kaneshiro’s generous and thoughtful hospitality was legendary.”

The Kaneshiro family and bonsai community after the auction of Papa’s trees, the proceeds of which went to the U.S. National Arboretum. Photo from Jane Nakama.

Museum Donors & Their Trees: The Buttonwood Queen

Mary Madison tends to a bonsai, courtesy of Orlando Bonsai.

What do you know about bonsai royalty?  

In our new blog series, “Museum Donors and Their Trees,” we sat down with Mary Madison, known throughout the bonsai community as “The Buttonwood Queen” for her fantastic work on the buttonwoods, or Conocarpus erectus, native to the United States. Madison said the nickname comes from one of her mentors, Ben Oki, who introduced her off the cuff as “The Buttonwood Queen” at a demonstration in California years ago, and the title stuck. 

She grew up helping her dad plant and work in the yard of their home south of Miami, where she first cultivated her love for growing plants. Madison also had a knack for drawing and other art forms, and she said a former boyfriend who served in Japan after World War II would send her pictures of bonsai. After looking at the pictures, she decided to try tree training for herself.  

“The first tree I started on was a buttonwood,” Madison said. “I just kept on at it and couldn’t stop. I still can’t, and I’m 90 years old.”

After attending a few demonstrations at the Bonsai Society of Miami, Madison ended up studying under Oki and John Naka up until the two passed away in 2018 and 2004, respectively. 

She had trained a group planting of cypresses to resemble the Everglades, and Naka had told her she had natural talent. From that day, a beautiful friendship of more than 40 years formed between Madison, her husband TJ, Naka and Oki.

She added that she was the first woman to join the private bonsai club Naka was a member of, and the group even named one of her trees – an honor in the bonsai community. Madison hosted a tea ceremony and open house to show off the tree, which the club named Sen Ryu, or “mystical dragon.”

Madison’s buttonwood – donated in 1990

The queen’s trees

Madison first donated a buttonwood to the Museum in 1990, a tree she dug up herself in South Florida. 

She worked on the buttonwood for about four or five years before receiving a call from the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum asking her to donate a tree. Madison said someone sprayed her tree with Malathion on the trip up to the Museum, which she said is almost “instant death” for buttonwoods, so the tree had no leaves when first on display. 

Luckily, Madison said, Museum workers took great care of the buttonwood. She said the tree is back to its full glory and maintains her original style but has grown quite a bit since she donated it.

Madison said she styled the tree keeping in mind the “odd” trunk shape, which she said likely formed because the buttonwood grew up through rocks. 

“I just started following basic rules, like keeping the bottom larger than the top, until i figured out exactly what I wanted,” she said. “Then I eliminated a few branches and went on from there.”

Madison’s second tree at the Museum traveled around the world before landing at the Museum. She originally sold the tree – a buttonwood, of course – years ago, and it changed hands a few times, ending up under the wing of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2019.

“When I saw that picture of it at the CIA it tickled me to death, I thought that was so funny. People might start thinking I'm a spy or something,” Madison said. “But the CIA was afraid they might kill it, so they donated it to the Museum.”

While the Museum is not currently open, you can read more about the buttonwood from the CIA in our October Historical Tree Spotlight and see her first donated buttonwood among other North American Collection in our virtual catalogue.

Madison still holds demonstrations for the Miami bonsai group and private clubs around Florida to this day.

“I'll probably die out there working on a tree,” she joked. “That would be what I want.”