If juniper energy comes from the foliage........

AZbonsai

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Interesting! Didn't know that. Is it true that there is some special benefit with foliar feeding then in that species.

Not sure about the foliar feeding.

This is a Desert Museum Palo Verde: Cercidium x "Desert Museum"
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Monrovia says it was hybridized by Mark Dummett at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum. Combination of 3 different types of palo verde.

Ever wonder why the cambium is green in most species?

It does have a greenish cambium guessing because of the chlorophyll production in the bark.

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As far as the foliar feeding it is a desert plant with very small leaves to cut back on water loss through transpiration. So I am not sure how effective foliar feeding would be.

It does have beautiful yellow flowers with red highlights.
 

0soyoung

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It does have a greenish cambium guessing because of the chlorophyll production in the bark.
For the most part 'bark' is dead tissue. The chlorophyll is in living cells such as bark cambium (on the outside of the phloem tubes) and the vascular cambium (that we simply call 'the cambium'). There is also parenchyma distributed through the wood. I acer palmatum, young stem wood is green as is the cambium and the bark looks green. All of this photosynthesizes, but it is minor compared to the foliage. Like @grouper52, I had no idea so much of photosynthesis in Palo Verde occurred outside of the foliage.

I've never really pursued the question of why (vascular) cambium in most trees is green, even when the bark is very thick. Clearly it isn't photosynthesizing when the bark is very thick and opaque, yet the cambium has chlorphyll - what else does chlorophyll do besides photosythesis?


As to foliar feeding, the phloem tubes are in the leaf, so anything that gets into the leaf, through the stomata or otherwise, has the potential to get into the phloem tubes and to trickle on down the tree in them, getting unloaded by the daughter cells and into other living cells somewhere below. It was a physicist (Fermi?) that applied something with a radio tracer element to the leaves of the plant and then detected the radioactivity far away, down the plant, to prove the plausibility of foliar feeding.
 

grouper52

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Ever wonder why the cambium is green in most species?
[Activate Curmudgeon Mode] Funny, having spent a number years creating numerous deadwood features on my bonsai, I don't recall usually finding it very green at all, but merely glistening with the moist, vibrant life-functions conducted in those tissues. Maybe it's because, in the "Pacific North-wet" we don't get much sun up here at all during much of the year, so our trees - largely evergreen conifers - are perhaps more reliant on the actual foliage to create photosynthesis. Maybe the whole idea of foliage was a dead-end for the plant kingdom, yes? - except of course if one - as a bonsai artist - wants to make the foliage an artificially deep green with foliar spraying, as opposed to a more natural look to the trees. [Curmudgeon Mode Off]
 
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