Books on specific shimpaku subvarieties?

[bdmatt]

I recently purchased 6 kishu junipers of similar size and health from a couple different sources. Of those 6, there was a kishu with much more compact, tighter, and darker foliage than the rest. It looked similar to a sekka hinoki and was different enough from the other kishus to make me wonder if it was a different variety or subvariety.

Does anyone know if there's a textbook or website describing specific subcultivars of shimpakus?

 

[ShimpakuBonsai]

I don't think there is a book for specific shimpaku varieties, but I found the following on the Eisei-en website.

"The most famous variety is the Itoigawa Shimpaku (Juniperus chinensis var. Itoigawa) found in the Niigata Prefecture. Other varieties used for bonsai in Japan include the Kishu Shimpaku from Wakayama, the Tohoku Shimpaku from Tohoku Prefecture and the Hokkaido Shimpaku from northern Hokkaido, Japan."

Link: https://www.bjornbjorholm.com/care-...for-native-japanese-juniper-bonsai-juniperus/

Itoigawa and Kishu are well know but I have never seen the Tohoku and Hokkaido varieties.
I have Itoigawa and Kishu shimpaku and they are quite different in foliage and I'm very interested to see the foiliage of the Tohoku and Hokkaido varieties.

 

[scottschecter]

I recently purchased 6 kishu junipers of similar size and health from a couple different sources. Of those 6, there was a kishu with much more compact, tighter, and darker foliage than the rest. It looked similar to a sekka hinoki and was different enough from the other kishus to make me wonder if it was a different variety or subvariety.

Does anyone know if there's a textbook or website describing specific subcultivars of shimpakus?

Forum member Brian Van Fleet has a couple of blog posts on this subject that could be helpful to you.

https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/much-ado-about-shimpakuand-itoigawa-and-kishu/
https://nebaribonsai.wordpress.com/...s-among-itoigawa-kishu-and-shimpaku-junipers/

 

[BrightsideB]

Sounds interesting! Post some photo’s so we can see.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

From what I've heard they're genetically all chinensis var sargentii and essentially have some minor genetic differences that aren't recognized as true cultivars in the western sense, simply because they're not described as such.
Maybe it's time we huddle together and pay someone some money to A) get them here, B) get them a horticultural status and C) drop them in literature and nomenclature. Maybe do some turpene analysis and add them to the "this might prove handy for medicine" list or something. Most essential oils from Junipers have some cool effects.

Isn't there some Botanical conifer grant available somewhere?

But we have to keep in mind that if we start propagating junipers from seed, especially chinensis, we might accidentally find more awesome varieties than Japan has.
Anyone has some spare room? Like a patch of land they have no use for? Maybe the forum can huddle up and collect seeds for a couple years, drop them in a collective pool, grow them out and share the cuttings ten years later.

 

[dansai]

Its important to note that many varieties that we ascribe names to when they have come from Japan are not cultivars. Cultivar is short for Cultivated Variety and each plant correctly labelled as such is genetically identical as they have been propagated by asexual means (cuttings, layers, grafting). My understanding is that Japan tends to refer to many varieties based on region, as @ShimpakuBonsai has said, and therefore there is still genetic differences but they present similar qualities to each other. So there is no one Itoigawa or Kishu, rather a range of genetics referred to as each.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

There are all kind of weird shinpakus that a lot of people have probably not run into.
I've made it my mission to collect and play with all of them. I've got some variegated shinpaku (some of the foliage is bright yellow), and some golden variety which is of course quite gold looking. I find the the variegated has pretty similar characteristics to itoigawa but a bit leggier. The golden is also fairly itoigawa-like, but a little bit larger and therefore has a slightly chunky appearance.
So far I've taken cuttings off the golden and had a good success rate.
Also worth noting the the vigorous growth on the variegated are bright yellow, so their current state after a year of good growth is more of a 70/30 green/yellow ratio.