More of bonsai in Chennai

Last year, during my trip to India I was lucky to get a glimpse of the Chennai bonsai scene. I attended a monthly meeting of Bodhi Bonsai Association and saw bonsai collections of two club members.

I am back to India this moth and just attended another meeting of Bodhi Bonsai. It was good to be with this group again. It is the only bonsai club in a city of 20 million and their membership is growing steadily. This time another club member invited me to see his bonsai collection (images above and below). I was overwhelmed by a variety of tropical plants. Just like last time I was impressed by fig trees, but this collection also featured impressive Adeniums and Jades among many others (images blow).

Pest of the month: The Punctate Flower Chafer

For the past three years the soil of my bonsai trees have been getting infested with curl grubs. The worst case was a round pot with inner dimensions 4 X 20 cm, which had 24 of these bad boys (photo on the left). I reared some of them to find out what they are. They turned out to be the Punctate Flower Chafer Neorrhina punctatum, family Scarabaeidae (photo on the right). I was fighting them by repotting my plants, because even submerging the whole pot in insecticide solution doesn’t always kill them.