ID conifer Thuja or similar?

[philgobbe]

Hi all. Parents have 2 of these trees planted at the new house. Maybe potential bonsai....

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[robb63]

Hi Phil
Looks like Thuja Occidentalis. Common to find as hedge or screening plants.
I dug a few of these some time back. One by one all are now mulch.
Branches refused to back bud and only grew at tips.
With time a couple grew shoots at branch crotches only .That means regrowing branches from scratch.
The twin trunk in your pic IMO is not worth the effort digging out. If the other has a better base have a go.

Three years ago I asked a more experienced bonsai grower. Should I collect 6 Thuja from my garden for bonsai.
His answer= " Mate you got nothing to loose and at least will get some experience in collecting".
After all the effort that's all I got, "collecting experience" which I could have done without.
However all experience collecting trees teaches something good I'm told
My thuja's were collected end of July in Sydney. One dug in March and did as well.
Hope that helps

[LLK]

See Thuja bonsai:
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=thuj ... 75&bih=434
If you Google "Thuja" you get a lot of tips about growing it. If you enter "Thuja foliage" and click on Images you get a lot of photos of different Thuja varieties, which you can compare with your own.
robb63 had very bad experiences with Thuja. On the other hand mine were pretty good. Indeed the Thuja does not back bud on old wood, like the cypress and chamaecyparis, so to have success with it you need a young tree with plenty of foliage from close to the trunk right to the tip, and prune it hard to encourage new growth everywhere. I had my Thuja for several years till I got bored with it and sold it. I guess robb63, your shrubs were already too old to make anything out of them and I'd have a very close look at yours, Phil, to see if there is enough foliage , incl. close to the trunk. Good luck!

Lisa

[philgobbe]

The other one is much larger. Will check out the foliage area.

This "twin trunk" could easily be 2 when I looked at the base. I was thinking chopping now and collecting in spring. The luxury is I can do that...

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