Lovely Little Runts, A Journey of Juniper

Rivka

Shohin
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Just starting a little tread to track a little 3 some of junipers I'm digging out of a neighbors yard in the next few days. They have been languishing there for many years and I offered them some nice healthy landscape plants in exchange for these little contorted runts that are sad as landscaping, but will likely make lovely bonsai with the proper attention.

IMG_4429.jpeg

This is what caught my eye as i regularly drove past their place, the nice little double back kept catching my eye, otherwise it the the most prostrate juniper i have ever seen.

more posts and picture to come...
 

Rivka

Shohin
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This is what it looked like when i finally walked over to check it out:
Tree 1:
IMG_4437.jpeg IMG_4445.jpeg again the plat is flat out flat, but the first few inches are a fun little twisted question mark, and thick and healthy for the most part. I later inspected and saw an impressively large number of tiny back bud style growth in the first few inches of trunk!
IMG_4442.jpegIMG_4444.jpeg after clearing out fallen leaves and trimming out obvious dead or badly growing branches, I got to stand back and see what I had. its really nice and has a lot to work with. I will be interested to see how little or much the branches can support themselves once it is potted up. Clearly if they grew in a pot they would have completely cascaded, but these grew perfectly supported, will the stress of their own weight pulling down from a pot damaged them? Will they try to keep themselves up? hmmmmm.
I figure my choice is
  • Trim them back to lighten their load,
  • Support them till they get thicker and can hold themselves up, or
  • Help them cascade safely and arrange them nicely.
The reality is I'm sure come combo and compromise of all 3.
IMG_4440.jpeg oh and it's a boy
 

Rivka

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IMG_4448.jpeg
The 2nd one is the wild card, not sure if there is anything there to work with, but it is also clear that whatever is there, it is been burried in way wya too many years of mulch. So I'll head back there this week and dig it up enmasse and then start working on exposing its well kept secrets in due time.
 

Rivka

Shohin
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Tree Three:
For all that the first one is spread out flat, this one is a little ball of activity.
I think I will work on keeping this one as small as I possibly can and accentuate the "ball"
IMG_4450.jpeg IMG_4451.jpeg IMG_4449.jpeg
 

Rivka

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Anyone want to help me with identification? thankfully nothing like the needles from hell from some other junipers, I don’t see any juvenile needles, all scale type. Tips in the picture with the cones apear to be cleanly square in cross section. This last years growth is noticeably more blue than the previous years. I’m guessing Juniperus horizontalis or something similar?
 

Rivka

Shohin
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Thoughts on tree 1…

What kind of limits and risks is there changing the angle dominate branches take and/or ground support that it has had it’s whole life? For instance if i take this and let it cascade and start working toward something like F6B9D78B-3584-4011-A618-CEDC768F5617.jpeg clearly the smaller branches will wire just fine at the right time of year, but what about the shift of weight distribution the first 10in or so that are much thinker, older and would be bearing all the weight ? Does it need to be lowered over time? At a certain time of year? Supported from further movement? It seems too thin to need to be split to bend, but what do i know.

Otherwise I was thinking of doing a semi cascade and aiming long term for a balancing effect like CA0213DA-43CE-4854-897D-C73563DE1772.jpeg
Im a huge fan of geometry, mobiles and the active tension they so gracefully handle. So while it would likely be years before it was put in a pot like that, i do have a local person who could make them when the time comes.
For now the questions would be how you help stiffen up the branches and keep them from cascading too much, and maybe a already long horizontalis is simply not the plant to do it with?

This year my goal for it will just be to pot it up in an appropriate container probably a flat, and arrange and support the main branches. Other than that i’ll just focus on helping it settle in and grow. So picking which style i’m aiming for is a general choice, but needs to be made, because where in a pot it is positioned and how the main branch is drapped are quite different in each.
 

Rivka

Shohin
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Tree 1 ended up getting its roots pretty trashed as we dug her up. So much spill over from the gravel parking area it was languishing next to, i hope I got enough. I brought back as much of the soil immediately surrounding the roots as i could, sifted it to remove the massive percent of 1” gravel and mixed what was left back into some more suitable substrate I had ready, hopefully this mixture will give it the enough of the soil biology it was used to, while also being more conducive to growth going forward.
branches are surprisingly sturdier than i thought they might be, making me feel a cantilever design and hopefully a balancing bowl vessel of some sort is still a possibility. It will be interesting to see how it settles now that the earth is not supporting its outstretched branches. It could still end up a long cascade. Thankfully the backbudding I had noticed at first look continued throughout the intire length, it has a lot of growth coming in, so if the transplant didnt kill it, it should fill in nicely.
But for now I just going to nurse it, apologize repeatedly for the harsh removal from the packed gravel and hope it forgives me and lives, I’ll worry about styling next year.
898C566F-CAE1-4D1F-8BF3-43F64CAD6CFB.jpeg67DB06FA-34EC-448B-B2DE-4B6C70260A81.jpegF7C55026-0439-4FDC-B034-3FC2804FA2DC.jpeg
 
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Rivka

Shohin
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Tree 3, the little rats nest came out way easier (was farther from the gravel road) and had a huge amount of really nice fine roots. Red line in upotted picture shows where ground level was. Again I sifted gravel out, then sifted fines out a bit and then mixed its native soil back into my substrate and potted it up. With more roots than wow factor and decent backbudding (despite growing in the shadows of its own mess, I decided to torture it and hope it’s a masochist. I ended up finding these 4 branches that lay out like a organic compass and mark the cardinal directions. Two go low and spread out, two arch up high and cross over. They are marked out in one of the included images each highlighted in a color. There is a second trunk that while its a interesting shape, does not flow with main one, so will likely be removed at some point. I feel I will focusing on the compass rose as a design framework.

Time will tell how it responds to pure torture. It still could use some basic wiring.

138E64C3-EBDB-4294-AC7A-6BCD18DD8346.jpegDA71E078-719C-42C3-9EA6-CFB83A521005.jpeg
 

sorce

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It's horizontal alright, but bad drivers don't change genus, or species or whatever the hell Horizantalis is.

Growth looks to stretched.
Not that it matters.

Sorce
 

Rivka

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It's horizontal alright, but bad drivers don't change genus, or species or whatever the hell Horizantalis is.

Growth looks to stretched.
Not that it matters.

Sorce
Hey Rascal, what nonsense are you serving this early? 🤪
 

Gabler

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Hey Rascal, what nonsense are you serving this early? 🤪

I think it means that just because it was growing horizontally, that doesn't means it belongs to the species Juniperus horizontalis or whatever prostrate species you think it belongs to. It could be an upright juniper under poor conditions (i.e. a "bad driver"). I've been spending a lot of time reading old threads here on the forum since I joined in November, and I think I'm starting to pick up on frequent posters' speech patterns, though sometimes jokes still miss the mark given the lack of tone and context.
 

Rivka

Shohin
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Oh i was just ribbing him, (notice his forum title)

but in terms of identifying the species, i claim no particular skill in IDing them, that why i was asking folks.
the suggestion that it was J. horizontalis was made based on the needle scale type/shape, and its growth near the ends, and yeah its overall form, there are 5 of them planted here, and they all are extremely prostrate beside the one that has clearly been intentionally balled up.
If folks have corrective info, i would love to hear it.
 

Dav4

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Tree 1 ended up getting its roots pretty trashed as we dug her up. So much spill over from the gravel parking area it was languishing next to, i hope I got enough. I brought back as much of the soil immediately surrounding the roots as i could, sifted it to remove the massive percent of 1” gravel and mixed what was left back into some more suitable substrate I had ready, hopefully this mixture will give it the enough of the soil biology it was used to, while also being more conducive to growth going forward.
branches are surprisingly sturdier than i thought they might be, making me feel a cantilever design and hopefully a balancing bowl vessel of some sort is still a possibility. It will be interesting to see how it settles now that the earth is not supporting its outstretched branches. It could still end up a long cascade. Thankfully the backbudding I had noticed at first look continued throughout the intire length, it has a lot of growth coming in, so if the transplant didnt kill it, it should fill in nicely.
But for now I just going to nurse it, apologize repeatedly for the harsh removal from the packed gravel and hope it forgives me and lives, I’ll worry about styling next year.
View attachment 361694View attachment 361695View attachment 361696
100% pumice would generally be the best soil for collected junipers. Too much moisture within the remaining root mass will slow root regrowth and may foster rot.

and that is almost definitely J. horizontalis 'blue rug'
 

Rivka

Shohin
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100% pumice would generally be the best soil for collected junipers. Too much moisture within the remaining root mass will slow root regrowth and may foster rot.

and that is almost definitely J. horizontalis 'blue rug'
Yeah my mix is nearly 3/4 pumice. But we also are in a naturally wet area, so things here have adapted to it for the most part. Since my watering discipline can also be shoddy, there is a tad of organics to help stabilize moisture in the summer. Thankfully most things are in growers flats, so drainage is top notch.
 
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