Remove Juvenile Foliage?

[Woocash]

I went to the garden centre today and came back with this Juniperus Chinensis ‘Communis’ which was half price, so of course I couldn’t resist. Also, it has a mix of juvenile and adult foliage and stands about 3 ft tall to the tip. Good learner material, as far as I’m concerned.

On the way home I had been thinking I’ll just straight away remove all juvenile growth, only leaving adult foliage and take it from there. I did realise on closer inspection, however, that quite a lot of what I thought were purely juvenile branches have adult foliage growing at the tips so this has left me unsure how to proceed with regards keeping or removing juvenile growth.

Would anybody please help with clarifying the best course of action? Do I remove all juvenile growth regardless? Keep some on the branches where adult growth has begun to form? Etc etc. Thanks very much.

 

[Woocash]

Also, I can’t find any information for Juniperus Chinensis ‘communis’. Could this be just the straight up species version, perhaps?

 

[Forsoothe!]

Leave it be. Its response to hard pruning is to produce foliage, quickly, and you want it to get over that stage and go back to mature growth.

 

[Woocash]

Thanks, I’m not sure if it has ever been pruned though. All the juvenile growth is on the interior and the scale foliage is on the more mature branches or at the tips of younger branches.

 

[leatherback]

In general, the juvinile foliage is a response to either being young, or trimming, or..

That the branches are now growing scale is a good sign. I would be carefull trimming too much if the needles are recent. Maybe take a light thinning.

I do not cut out needle foliage untill it starts to yellow ..

 

[Woocash]

In general, the juvinile foliage is a response to either being young, or trimming, or..

That the branches are now growing scale is a good sign. I would be carefull trimming too much if the needles are recent. Maybe take a light thinning.

I do not cut out needle foliage untill it starts to yellow ..

Ah ok. I was hoping I could cut out a fair amount so I can view the trunk and branch structure properly. Thems needles is sharp!

I’ll start with a normal tidy and go from there. Thanks.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Remarkable!
Communis is a needle variety, chinensis is not.
I have a couple chinensis var. stricta that produce strictly needle foliage, but it looks a bit more compact than this one. They should never make scale foliage, but the oldest specimen I know is roughly 40 years old so I'm not sure.

That's some weird labelling. But then again, it could very well be a hybrid of the two with both traits being dominant and constantly competing. I've seen it happen in some other hybrids and it's weird to watch those grow.
But for you this means you're up for two challenges: finding out what it is (juvenile or cultivar related) and how to deal with it.
If there's one branch with scale foliage that you're not comfortable with anyways, I'd hack it back and see how it responds: does it make tight needle foliage like chinensis does, or coarse needle foliage like a communis?
If it's the latter, there are competing traits that you're never going to control. But then again, you'd probably be dealing with hybrid vigor that's unknown to most juniper owners. That'd make it prime trunk material to graft on! And it would also improve the strike rate of cuttings, and the overall growth rate.

 

[Dav4]

This could be a very difficult juniper to manage if you're interested in keeping only the scale foliage as it seems like the cultivar wants to have both. I'm not familiar with the cultivar, but with my J. chinensis 'San Jose', which is also prone to holding both needle and scale foliage, I would remove the scale foliage when it appeared. After a year, it grew only needle foliage which was my goal. I'm very likely to graft shimpaku onto it, as I despise the prickly needles!

 

[Shibui]

Juniper comunis is a species. Juniper chinensis is another species. I have not heard of a variety of chinensis called 'communis' but there is frequent misidentification and mis-labelling of junipers because so many look similar.
Removing all the needle foliage will leave you with long, bare branches so not conducive to bonsai. Hard pruning also stimulates more juvenile growth. The only way I know is to allow the tree to mature naturally. They tend to start to produce new mature shoots in crotches which can be allowed to develop until large enough to prune back to but there's always the chance new growth after pruning will become spiky for a season or 2.

Given the confusion over ID an the large amounts of spiky foliage I would ten toward @Dav4 s suggestion of grafting the trunk to a better form if there is a decent trunk under all that.

 

[BobbyLane]

i dont know anything about these but i saw some information here, it does clarify that communis also called common juniper is a different variety to chinensis so maybe the nursery just muddled it up a bit

Common Juniper Evergreen Bonsai Tree

Common juniper shohin sized bonsai tree A nice dense foliage juniper with an interesting trunk Ready for refinement work to begin 9

www.kaizenbonsai.com

Parson's Juniper Bonsai Raw Material

Parson's juniper bonsai material Excellent easy to care for variety Superb powerful fluted trunk and a massive nebari. A nice easy styling project 31

www.kaizenbonsai.com

 

[Forsoothe!]

What? Mislabeled? I'm shocked! Shocked!

 

[Woocash]

Much obliged gents. I have thinned out some of the very interior stuff (mostly dead) just to get a look at the trunk and as expected it is pretty straight, but with some decent taper. I’m actually thinking of practicing some heavy bending and forming some sort of literati, therefore only using a couple or three primary branches.

The branches at the top are more or less exclusively adult foliage so if I were to remove all the branches with juvenile foliage, whilst not touching the keepers, would the keepers likely maintain their mature growth pattern or revert to juvenile?

 

[leatherback]

would the keepers likely maintain their mature growth pattern or revert to juvenile?

Depends very much on how healthy it is now.
I think I would be very carefull with trimming on this one for now. Or accept andother year with needles.

 

[Shibui]

The branches at the top are more or less exclusively adult foliage so if I were to remove all the branches with juvenile foliage, whilst not touching the keepers, would the keepers likely maintain their mature growth pattern or revert to juvenile?

So much rides on how that variety responds to pruning. Leaving the adult foliage branches alone will give you the best chance but I can't predict how this one will perform just from experience of other types.
Good luck!

 

[Forsoothe!]

That, and you need to reduce the roots to be in balance with the foliage volume.

 

[Woocash]

Depends very much on how healthy it is now.
I think I would be very carefull with trimming on this one for now. Or accept andother year with needles.

I’m thinking some experimenting may be in order. It’s far from perfect material, so it may be worthy of a bit of a play around. Who knows, I might get lucky!

 

[Woocash]

So much rides on how that variety responds to pruning. Leaving the adult foliage branches alone will give you the best chance but I can't predict how this one will perform just from experience of other types.
Good luck!

Thanks. I can play the long game I reckon anyway. I don’t get many J. Chinensis round this neck of the woods so it’ll be interesting to see how it responds as the mature foliage is pretty nice. Worst comes to worst I can practice some grafting. Now to find some Shimpaku.....

 

[Woocash]

That, and you need to reduce the roots to be in balance with the foliage volume.

What happens if you leave more roots than foliage? I thought you shouldn’t remove more than a third of juniper roots at one time?