Kind of an odd juniper

J. virginiana. 15 inches. In a bonsai pot 5 years now; collected seven years. It finally seems to be adapting to a drooping habit.

Beautiful tree Jim! Saw this one a while back, liked it then, but now even more.

Well, I'm not sure that I would choose that adjective. <g> But thanks.

As I say, odd, maybe; even quirky; certainly curious. I do like it, though -- kinda. It's Hard to do standard bonsai with J. virginiana.

Things would be boring if they were like everything else, bonsai the same as anything. Sticking with my adjacitve(wink wink). Can't find much on this species, how dose it respone to pruning from your experience?

I would really LOVE to see more Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana bonsai trees posted on IBC. The 'usual' stick-straight trunk found growing out in the wild, surrounded by that dense, wild mob of dusky foliage does not tell the whole story of these trees as bonsai material. We've seen that those wild junipers seen growing in-ground, can get HUGE.
- In pot culture they will actually grow out pretty fast. You can do some pretty horrible things to these trees when they are collected as babies, and they really do just seem to shrug the abuse off. Pot grown trees that look like horribly tortured, Wild-Collected Yamadori are quite possible to obtain with Red Cedars.
- I personally believe the foliage looks best on these things when they are in stressed-out, spiky juvenile mode. Nick Lenz despairs of the mix of mature and juvenile foliage you usually wind up with in them, and his solution is to just graft Shimpaku Juniper stock onto the Red Cedar. To that end, I've seen that they do take to grafts almost ridiculously easy......
- It's almost impossible to find a contorted, low growing J. virginiana in the wild. But, they DO exist! And in my opinion, those rare trees are certainly worthy of all the respect you would give a collected a Rocky Mountain Juniper, Juniperus scopulorum or Shimpaku Juniper, Juniperus chinensis as material to develop into bonsai. The bark on the Eastern Red Cedar, Juniperus virginiana looks fantastic if treated, to highlight the deadwood elements.

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I think the reverse is good.