AusBonsai

Hi all. I am very much a beginner in bonsai. And was wondering whether anyone had any experience with native wattles with compound/bipinnate leafs, particularly; black wattle (acacia mearnsii), silver wattle (Acacia dealbata) or green wattle (Acacia decurrens). As I find these leaf shapes very beautiful for their form like I do for JM leaves. And believe their compound nature offsets their size, hence i believe they would still work for medium and smaller trees whist maintaining bonsai proportions and balance. In nature they also for some very pleasing structures. Even though they often only live to 20, I have seen exceptional/uncommon specimens with trunk girths twice to 4x the normal mature girth, which must be much older.

Any advice or tips would be appreciated about using these for bonsai. I believe black wattle is particularly promising as it supposedly takes pruning well in a garden setting.

I have some seeds on their way so should hopefully be trialing the three species listed above come spring.

I have not tried any of these acacias as bonsai but have grown plenty for farm revegetation.
One way of dealing with compound leaves is to leaf prune each leaf to reduce the number of leaflets. We do it with wisteria and it works well. Cut the rachis (leaf stem) part way along to reduce the length of the leaf blade, leaving some of the side leaflets. With these acacias you could probably even reduce the length of the leaflets to shape the remaining leaf to a more natural shape.
If you want to retain entire leaves just make the bonsai a bit larger to make the whole look a bit more natural.

Hoping someone can give some practical help for cultivating these Acacias. A. howittii is the only acacias I seem to be able to mange well. I still have a couple of rarer bipinnate leaf acacias alive but I struggle to keep good branching on them.

Thank you for the tip, hopefully going to be a fun group to experiment with