Kofu Bonsai Kai California Juniper Dig 2012

Today it was a very special day for Kofu Bonsai Kai, we held our annual digging trip to the Mojave Desert looking for some California Juniper specimes.

This year it was a very well attended event, a convoy of 12 vehicles and a total of 18 members, some of them have been digging on these lands before I was even born (I'm 29 btw).



We started a little bit late this time, but in no time we were ready hiking and looking for that special tree.

Thanks to the help of my brother and my dad, and some really good tips from Paul Vasina, I was able to bring back one very large Juni.



I was not able to take a lot of pictures this time, but hopefully, next year I'll be able to bring some more to you.

Below, you will find a few pictures of the specimen I brought home, it's pretty large like I said with many options for jins and shari, tonight it will spend its first night out of the mountains soaking on a bucket with water and superthrieve. It's foliage has been reduced about 50-55% to help balance with the root reduction, tomorrow, I will pot it on a large 20-25 gallon plastic container with pure horticultural pumice and let it establish for a couple of years at least before starting any work on it. I can't wait to go back for a couple more, maybe after the sore on my body goes away!









This is a branch, not the main trunk.

nice tree. I wish I could go on group digs like that. Too bad the tree doesn't have any natural deadwood because unless you have Kimura's carving skills, it is going to be really hard to create good and natural looking deadwood on this tree.

buddhamonk wrote:nice tree. I wish I could go on group digs like that. Too bad the tree doesn't have any natural deadwood because unless you have Kimura's carving skills, it is going to be really hard to create good and natural looking deadwood on this tree.

I thought the same - really good to go into the desert to hunt a juniper,- an excelent club outing for sure (wish we had a desert here ) but spending as long as it takes finding a naturally weathered and battered up one would achieve a much better finished result.

good luck with its establishment though, and have fun with all the stubs - peeling the fibres is the best way and that is easier beforde they dry out too much.

cheers Marcus

Nice find. Good luck with it and keep us pposted.

As for the lack of natural deadwood, I wouldn't worry - but can be reproduced to a decent extent. After 50 years of club collecting trips to that area the real primo specimens are probably long gone.

buddhamonk wrote:nice tree. I wish I could go on group digs like that. Too bad the tree doesn't have any natural deadwood because unless you have Kimura's carving skills, it is going to be really hard to create good and natural looking deadwood on this tree.

buddhamonk,
Thanks for your comment, I'm not too worry about the "natural" deadwood either, just like Rob Kempinski it is something that it can be reproduced to a decent condition, I've seen a lots of material from other members here and in some other places with some really neat carving and jins/shari techniques and I highly doubt they have Kimura's skills either, I'm sure something nice can be done with this one, of course the best and safest will be to take it to my club and get help from the long timers there, including Harry Hirao.

marcus watts wrote:

good luck with its establishment though, and have fun with all the stubs - peeling the fibres is the best way and that is easier beforde they dry out too much.

cheers Marcus

that is exactly what I had on mind!, thanks for the input.

Rob Kempinski wrote:Nice find. Good luck with it and keep us posted.

As for the lack of natural deadwood, I wouldn't worry - but can be reproduced to a decent extent. After 50 years of club collecting trips to that area the real primo specimens are probably long gone.

Rob,

with all the respect that you and any other member here deserve, I really think that there's many, many more excellent materials to be dig out, I mean, Mojave has a 54,000 square mile surface, yesterday probably I got to see 3-4 square miles and there were without joking a few thousand trees to choose from, also let's keep in mind the extreme hard to reach areas/valleys, I doubt all the prime specimens are gone, you just need to work extra hard and reach extreme areas and surely will get to take something back home.

Hello,

Nice to see the club on its treasure hunt
I just joined the club so look forward going to the Christmas pot luck.

Best regards,
Ris

How/where did you collect this tree? I see a lot of these thread where people go off into the wilderness and collect some trees. How exactly do you get permission?

hello,
is it possible to know the juniperus species and to explain to me why you cut a lot off foliage ( because the car is to samall ) , because, on pinus sylvestris arakii for example, I don't cut foliage after collecting when I put the tree in pot at the first time, because, that's the foliage who give sugar to the roots and not the roots that feed on the foliage ,Do you protect the tree after collecting thank's ?

wow that looks like fun question would your club consider bringing a member from another club? i would love to go and dig up a nice cali juniper

How many of these trees actually survive? It sounds like you just get up in the morning, drive over, dig out some trees and put them in a pot. From what I know most plants feel very sad when you just pull them out without proper preparation of the roots over the course of months/years? Or are they in a special location where you get very small rootballs that you can get out fairly intact?

Ris26 wrote:Hello,

Nice to see the club on its treasure hunt
I just joined the club so look forward going to the Christmas pot luck.

Best regards,
Ris

Great Ris, I hope to see you at the Christmas party, lots of good stuff on the raffle.

PeacefulAres wrote:How/where did you collect this tree? I see a lot of these thread where people go off into the wilderness and collect some trees. How exactly do you get permission?

Hi, sorry but I just can't tell the exact location of the dig, one thing is, you ALWAYS need some kind of permit to do this activity, in this case, the land is private own, so we had the owners permit to do it.

abcd wrote:hello,
is it possible to know the juniperus species and to explain to me why you cut a lot off foliage ( because the car is to samall ) , because, on pinus sylvestris arakii for example, I don't cut foliage after collecting when I put the tree in pot at the first time, because, that's the foliage who give sugar to the roots and not the roots that feed on the foliage ,Do you protect the tree after collecting thank's ?

Hi,

This is the native California Juniper from the Mojave Desert, that was my first time going into a club dig, I was told by the old seasoned members that after you arrive home with your new gems, make sure to repot them ASAP in a proper soil mix and cut about %50 of the foliage to allow the tree to recover and balance for many many roots that were removed during the dig, the tree is currently doing great, is pushing new foliage all over and seems to be recovering pretty good and fast. The tree has been under a shade since the dig.

andre_f wrote:wow that looks like fun question would your club consider bringing a member from another club? i would love to go and dig up a nice cali juniper

You must be a member of the club, for liability reasons, after you become a member, you can be part of all the activities of the club during that year.

leatherback wrote:How many of these trees actually survive? It sounds like you just get up in the morning, drive over, dig out some trees and put them in a pot. From what I know most plants feel very sad when you just pull them out without proper preparation of the roots over the course of months/years? Or are they in a special location where you get very small rootballs that you can get out fairly intact?

The survival rate I believe is base on the experience of the person while digging and the after care of course, I own 2 C. Junipers and both are doing wonderful, I think I read somewhere that the expected survival rate of a C. Juniper was about 50/50%. But this is not the case for Harry Hirao who's been digging from the desert for the past 50 years more or less, in fact this is his truck after a good digging day, that photo is from 1 or 2 weeks after the club's trip to the desert



I heard some club members who are very close to Harry, that his rate of survival is about 90-95%

I don't need to know the location, nor do I care. What I meant to say was, how did you go about getting permission? Was it a friends property?

PeacefulAres wrote:I don't need to know the location, nor do I care. What I meant to say was, how did you go about getting permission? Was it a friends property?

You can say that is was a "friends property" I think the club has been collecting on that same property for 20+ years, the exact process for getting the permission I have no clue of it, but if you have no "friends" that would allow you to collect on their property I don't think that its going to be a very easy process.

When I start collecting junipers close to 30 years ago we were advised, as you currently are, to reduce the foliage, since the collected tree has fewer roots then when it was in the ground. Our success rate was about 50% as you mentioned. However talking to people with a backround in horticulture, we learned that roots develop from the energy of the foliage from the plant. More foliage, more chances of new roots growing. At least the last 10 years or so, I don't reduce any of the foliage after collecting, no matter how many roots are on the tree. Since then my success rate has been right around 80%.

bob shimon wrote:When I start collecting junipers close to 30 years ago we were advised, as you currently are, to reduce the foliage, since the collected tree has fewer roots then when it was in the ground. Our success rate was about 50% as you mentioned. However talking to people with a backround in horticulture, we learned that roots develop from the energy of the foliage from the plant. More foliage, more chances of new roots growing. At least the last 10 years or so, I don't reduce any of the foliage after collecting, no matter how many roots are on the tree. Since then my success rate has been right around 80%.

Thanks for the info Bob, definitely will give it a try next time.

A lot off people don't know that is the foliage who give sugar to the roots and not the roots who feed the tree !!!!

Please keep in mind, keeping the foliage in order to grow roots holds true for junipers, with pines its theother way around, the roots promote the foliage

kora wrote:Please keep in mind, keeping the foliage in order to grow roots holds true for junipers, with pines its theother way around, the roots promote the foliage

exactly right - and it is critical to remember this when root pruning too - a juniper can loose lots of roots but is severly weakened if it looses over 1/3 of the foliage (often triggering juvenille growth too) . A pine though can loose a lot of foliage as long as it retains most of the roots. Balancing root loss with foliage reduction is a deciduous method really.


I know if i had 54000 sq miles I'd drive around for a year or more looking for a really good one before digging anything up. Twisting and Weathering from 100 years of wind and driven sand cant be wired, carved or copied convincingly really

now............where is the nearest desert ?

PeacefulAres wrote:I don't need to know the location, nor do I care. What I meant to say was, how did you go about getting permission? Was it a friends property?

I'm sure in America the law will be entirely different, but here in belgium you legally CAN NOT dig out shrubs or trees in a location that would be similar to that on these pictures, EVEN if it is private property., if the land is not legally predestined as building land, urban area...but more like nature land, reserve, forest, (desert in america maybe), outback, rural areas... its seems to me this location has such a legal status. So no, only government then can give you this permit (many times as exceptional measure, where you are still bound to some laws about nature protection).

i know for a fact that many 'yamadori' are dug out illegally, even when every one shouts or swears there was a permit, or it was on some private property...

cheers

"i know for a fact that many 'yamadori' are dug out illegally"-so do I-I,ve seen it done and then swore their lives away they had permission!!
"Hi, sorry but I just can't tell the exact location of the dig"-hmm,i left a bonsai club for this excact reason
,and some clubs wonder why they,re membership falls

Kofu Bonsai Kai was founded over 30 years ago by Harry Hirao. I know they dig every year at the "Hansen Ranch". Members have to sign waivers to dig on the property. If you are interested in how to obtain proper permitting, why don't you call an officer of the club and ask:

http://www.kofukai.org/7.html

-Dorothy

There are many government tracts throughout the Western U.S.--some larger than Belgium--where collecting is entirely legal. Permits are granted regularly by many state and federal landowners (as well as private land owners). I highly doubt the men here are breaking any laws.

rockm wrote:There are many government tracts throughout the Western U.S.--some larger than Belgium--where collecting is entirely legal. Permits are granted regularly by many state and federal landowners (as well as private land owners). I highly doubt the men here are breaking any laws.

i'll quote myself...."I'm sure in America the law will be entirely different, but here in belgium..."

I'm sure these trees are legal. With the environmental concerns in California the way they are, where people have lost farm equipment because they accidentally ran over some protected lizard with their tractor, someone caught illegally harvesting old growth timber (which some environmentalist gestapo official would call trees like this) would be in serious trouble. It's not worth the risk to do this illegally.

Vance Wood wrote:I'm sure these trees are legal. With the environmental concerns in California the way they are, where people have lost farm equipment because they accidentally ran over some protected lizard with their tractor, someone caught illegally harvesting old growth timber (which some environmentalist gestapo official would call trees like this) would be in serious trouble. It's not worth the risk to do this illegally.

you are actually lucky to still have protected lizards to run over...maybe very strict laws about that, are not a bad thing. Lose farm equipment because of accidently running over a lizard? hehe was that to give it some colour or you got lost in imagination there? . If for real, well thats not the law thats wrong, thats the officer that gets lost in interpretation then .

About the environmental gestapo-thing...waw thats some statement to make. You do know about mother earth and its environment yes? Dont worry, the environmental users and abusers will make sure its all over in another couple of hundred years :-), you wont have to worry about any law or lizard then . Use, abuse, pollute, and give nothing back, hell by that time we just drop mother earth and move to another planet.

but untill then, if you see a lizard, drive by it will you, you have a steering wheel to turn it around, its more fun to steer it once in a while.