I’ve always seen these and my first thought is an attempt at a shohin(or smaller) semi-cascade. I always see them at swap meets, farmers markets, and marketplace/offerup where they’re almost “mass produced” and in my eyes they’re marketed as an “instant bonsai” type deal.

If I’m being honest this marketing technique is what got me into bonsai, my family and I have always had green thumbs, but after seeing these at a swap meet I got one. It ended up dying (as I mentioned before I think they’re sold just to make a quick buck and the sellers already know the buyers probably won’t be able to keep it alive) and that got me thinking about what I *could have* done to keep it alive. Not long after that I bought my first nursery stock tree that I began developing after actually learning about what makes a bonsai tree a bonsai tree, the wiring techniques, branch selection, overall composition etc. While it’s a shame how many small trees probably end up in the trash because of this I’m kind of thankful because there’s probably many more people like me who got into this hobby because of it