BonsaiSim: Bonsai Simulator

BonsaiSim grows a real tree. Not an animation on a timer — a Japanese maple that photosynthesizes, spends what it earns, and answers every cut you make.

Plant a seedling and work it for twenty years. Prune a branch and watch the tree push new shoots below the wound, the way a real one does. Pinch the tips through spring to force the tree to ramify. Wire a trunk and bend it, and see the wood set into the shape you gave it. Defoliate in summer for a second, finer flush of leaves. Repot into fresh soil and let the roots run again.

Every season leaves a mark. The tree thickens where it carries weight, sheds branches it can no longer feed, and closes its wounds slowly. Winter strips it bare so you can finally read the structure you built. Nothing is decoration: the trunk taper, the branch ramification, the bare stretches you regret — all of it comes out of what the tree could afford that year.

When it finally looks like something, take it into the photo studio: a lit table, a real depth-of-field lens, and a wooden stand. Save the picture to your camera roll.

There is no timer to wait out and nothing to buy to grow faster. Just a tree, a pair of shears, and as many years as you want to give it.

Built on measured botany — leaf area, sap flow, apical dominance — with the species sheet published openly at bonsaisim.com.

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