grouper52
Masterpiece
I'm starting to move forward on this Sierra juniper, and wanted to start a thread to capture the progression over time.
Here it was shortly after I acquired it about a year ago. Dan Robinson was over my house one day, saw a hollow trunked Nothofagus that captured his imagination so passionately that he said I could have any of his unfinished trees I wanted in trade. So I picked out a RMJ, just barely, and not too convincingly, starting to recover from its Wyoming collection several years before. It wasn't the sort of tree most people would immediately notice as worthwhile, and I don't think Dan thought there was any chance I would, but I certainly did. "That one." He was shocked and embararrassed to go back on the deal, but he had to: "Oh . . . no, no . . . any tree but THAT one!"
So I chose this one, which I think he also regreted. I had watched it struggle back over five years from its precarious collection in Oregon or California, only gaining a little growth in the few remaining live areas over the past year. It was one of my favorites of his, and I was surprised he let it go.
The picture below shows it a year ago shortly after his transplant into that pot. A few weeks later I approach grafted Shimpaku from two small cuttings I had grown, a total of four grafts. I left them wrapped and covered with graft paste the next year, and got in there to check them out yesterday - all four grafts seem to have taken fine, and I therefore severed the Shimpaku from their bases in gallon pots which had been hanging suspended in the air.
A few months after the grafts were started, the tenous Sierra junpier foliage began to grow with amazing vigor. Eric suggested perhaps the Sierra's foliage was drawing sustenance from the well established Shimapku roots. But Dan, based on his experience and what he has learned from those who do such grafts routinely, believes it is due to a different phenomenon: apparently when Shimpaku, which sports robust roots, is grafted onto other junipers that do not, it somehow influences then to also start producing much more robust roots, such that their foliage can take off with vigorous growth for a short while until it is severed to allow the Shimpaku to grow by itself.
Anyway, I'll try to post the work over the next few weeks as it proceeds, repotting and such.
Here it was shortly after I acquired it about a year ago. Dan Robinson was over my house one day, saw a hollow trunked Nothofagus that captured his imagination so passionately that he said I could have any of his unfinished trees I wanted in trade. So I picked out a RMJ, just barely, and not too convincingly, starting to recover from its Wyoming collection several years before. It wasn't the sort of tree most people would immediately notice as worthwhile, and I don't think Dan thought there was any chance I would, but I certainly did. "That one." He was shocked and embararrassed to go back on the deal, but he had to: "Oh . . . no, no . . . any tree but THAT one!"
So I chose this one, which I think he also regreted. I had watched it struggle back over five years from its precarious collection in Oregon or California, only gaining a little growth in the few remaining live areas over the past year. It was one of my favorites of his, and I was surprised he let it go.
The picture below shows it a year ago shortly after his transplant into that pot. A few weeks later I approach grafted Shimpaku from two small cuttings I had grown, a total of four grafts. I left them wrapped and covered with graft paste the next year, and got in there to check them out yesterday - all four grafts seem to have taken fine, and I therefore severed the Shimpaku from their bases in gallon pots which had been hanging suspended in the air.
A few months after the grafts were started, the tenous Sierra junpier foliage began to grow with amazing vigor. Eric suggested perhaps the Sierra's foliage was drawing sustenance from the well established Shimapku roots. But Dan, based on his experience and what he has learned from those who do such grafts routinely, believes it is due to a different phenomenon: apparently when Shimpaku, which sports robust roots, is grafted onto other junipers that do not, it somehow influences then to also start producing much more robust roots, such that their foliage can take off with vigorous growth for a short while until it is severed to allow the Shimpaku to grow by itself.
Anyway, I'll try to post the work over the next few weeks as it proceeds, repotting and such.
