Collecting Eastern Red Cedar- Juniperus virginiana

Hello All,

Just a few photos of one of the Eastern Red Cedars- Juniperus virginiana, I recently collected from a cow field, and a few others I still want to go back for! I saw a few amazing Red Cedar bonsai at the US National Exhibition, and they were some of my favorites in the show, so I've been keeping my eye out for anything but the beanpoles they usually are. Does anyone out there have any, or any advice on their care?
Thanks, hope you like them!
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Holy Crap! I've never seen an Eastern redcedar like any of those. I'd be digging too!

R

What he said. Nice!

ERC like that aren't common. Telephone pole trunks are more the rule. Great find.

Kevin Yates wrote: Does anyone out there have any, or any advice on their care?

Give me the GPOS coordinates of that field, and I'll have some

Nice tree! Wish we had fields where junipers were just growing wild.

A great find.......first hit on google http://bonsainut.com/forums/showthread.php?3353-Eastern-Red-Cedars/page3,
might help you get started on the care of them.........or Nick Lenz's book, Collecting from the wild

Great yamadori!

Really nice!! So envious

Believe me, finding J. virginiana that look like those is a real rarity.

It is one of the most common scrub woods trees around here and they all are tall, thin candle flames. Livestock ignore them because the grass is too rich; deer can't be bothered. So they just grow straight -- and skinny.

ENVY!

Vey nice material! My approuch would be to work the tree out of the original soil over three years then really feed. Then down pot and then keep energized and style.

My experience on virginiana care:

[list][*]
don't overpot
retain green upon collection
foliar fertilize upon collection
work in coarse inorganics into pockets of root ball on inital planting
give sun
repot 2nd or 3rd year after collection
make holes in old soil and pack in coarse soil (large turface,perlite,pumice) in summer
empty 1/3 of mud/duff etc. out of roots during repotting until its ALL gone
mine in the northern mid-west like /medium/coarse 20%perlite, 40%Turface, 20%pumice, 20% composted bark
once in coarse soil they can really be fertilized allot
don't work if weak but don't let them get gangly during recovery either. cut back wisely.
once going fast, grow hard and then cut back.
Their foliage can settle down and be very nice once cultured.
See Lenz book

I'll be scouring pastures a little more closely after seeing this! Truly amazing material!

Awesome find! I hope they make it.

Russell Coker wrote:Holy Crap! I've never seen an Eastern redcedar like any of those. I'd be digging too!

Likewise. We have millions of red cedar here and I haven't seen any like that yet. I better start looking

Poink88 on Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:25 pm
We have millions of red cedar here and I haven't seen any like that yet. I better start looking

Actually Dario, our local juniper here is Ashe Juniper (Juniperus ashei), which looks nearly identical to Red (J. virginiana), but is different in a few key ways. The biggest for us Bonsai folk is that they're harder to collect and keep containerized - roots are much touchier. Red Cedar is usually found at about the Dallas area Northward.

Kevin- that is one terrific tree! Great curves and shape. One question, what soil mix did you use? .. it looks like it is mainly pine bark. Can't speak to conditions growing in Canada, but down here that may be considered too moisture-retentive. All depending on its location and care of course. Anyway, terrific & thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the clarification Joey. I was told they are Virginiana much earlier and I just took it.

Thanks for all your help with their care. I did check out Lenz's book before hand but the chapter on ERC was really washed over since it is not such 'great' bonsai material. I will do my best with them and will report back. I did manage to collect a few common junipers 5+ years ago, and they are apparently more difficult to collect than the ERC are. The wooden box was made to accommodate the roots with no extra room, and I left some of the original soil (it was consisted of pure clay and decomposed limestone). I replaced it with some crushed limestone, charcoal and hemlock bark, 50/50-ish, but it the photo it looks like more bark because applied just bark to the surface to retain moisture. Pretty much all the ERC up here grow in dry or very wet area with a limestone base. The common junipers I collected were planted in pure Eastern Cedar bark, and they all survived when I know others can’t seem to keep them alive, don’t know what you will make of that (?)

Well, who knows but the crushed limestone is probably a bit alkaline and not the best base to use--despite that it grows in it in the wild. Definitely pure bark on the common junipers is not a good long term soil--I would transition them into a more standard mix.

Here is an update on the red cedar I collected last year. It overwintered sitting out all season in the box, pulling through with no issues and then exploding with new growth over spring and summer. I decided to cut just a few branches, and do the first wiring. It was difficult to think of what form the tree should take since all the main branches or trunks came from the same top location. I decided to follow a narrative of a wind beaten storm damaged tree, instead of following any traditional design approach. Any suggestions would be appreciated, how about a pot choice?

I love seeing good red "cedar" bonsai in training!

how about a pot choice?

Deep-ish, square, brown, unglazed.

There is a problem with red cedar. It is the alternate host of cedar apple rust, which can devastate a bonsai. Your neighbors don't want it on their apple trees, either. Owning a red cedar means constant vigilance in the spring for the rust spore containers, which look like blobs of jelly.
Iris

I have half a dozen of them in various stages of becoming small bonsai. I've found that a spray with lime sulfur in early spring seems to keep Cedar Apple Rust at bay. Not sure that wold be a probem as far north as Kevin lives????????

Cedar apple rust is found wherever apples or crabapples and junipers live near each other. I'm sure it occurs in Canada.
Iris

Thanks, yes I have seen it on trees here, in the forested areas of just ERC some trees appear to have it and suffer damage from it while others growing right next to an infected tree shows no signs. The area is also very close to apple growers, so it's already in the area. I've heard many treatments to fight it or at least keep it in check, so I will try that if it becomes a problem. Thanks Jim for the advice on the container choice.

Any chance of an update on this tree?

i also wanted to throw out a suggestion of running your guy wires through a little piece of rubber tubing to prevent it from digging into your tree (both living and deadwood parts)

Its been a year since this fella' checked in to IBC....me thinks the tree has "checked-out". Too bad, looked as though he had some nice features to work with. Or he's like me, no camera worth a damn to take a photograph!!