The goyo matsu is a very common subject for bonsai – the very best ones are collected in the wild, but many fine trees have also been field grown in Japan (there are people who specialize in growing “pre-bonsai”, which can take as much as fifty years, depending on the type of tree).

The various five-needle pine species are high mountain trees. They have shortish needles and typically show a lot of dead wood (esp the sub-alpine species). Here in the western US we have several 5-needle species, including the western white pine, the whitebark pine, and the limber pine.

In bonsai styling, the 5-needle pine is given more softness than the black pine. The Japanese refer to the 5-needle as more “feminine”, and the black pine as “masculine”.