Fantastic Juniper

[Bretts]

Went for a drive around the neighbourhood collecting seeds today and came across this amazing Juniper that I had never paid much attention to before!
How is the taper.

juni.jpg

juni2.jpg

I will get a close up of the foliage and seeds later I will be trying to propagate this by seed and cutting. Any ideas on species?

One of the rules of nature is that a tree does not actually taper it only appears to. The trunks or branches only diminish in size where it branches. Guess this is an exception to the rule. Might just be a long buttress.
Please have a close look at trees in the wild before calling me on this. I have looked and it is surprisingly very true.

[Mitchell]

Great specimen! Keep us posted on the seed development.

I have also noticed that natural trunks do not taper that much at all. It's funny, how we try and follow the rules, yet nature certainly has it's own set. Another thing I have been noticing lately is, how often do you see perfectly shaped nebari / surface roots on a tree in the wild? I can see how evenly spaced roots establish that the tree is solid and grounded in bonsai, but in nature nebari are twisted, distorted, roots overlap and generally do not match what we try and achieve through bonsai....

[Bretts]

Smarts CD it took some one to tell me before I noticed I read it in a how to paint trees book. Leonardo Da Vinci also points out that the addition of all the branches will equal the trunk

Remember Bonsai is not natural though and the rules of nature are not always the same when we try to recreate in miniature I think!

[Mitchell]

Remember Bonsai is not natural though and the rules of nature are not always the same when we try to recreate in miniature I think!

Well that's a bit of a conundrum now isn't it?!

We a trying to re-create the tree in minature, though we are altering them to co-incide with traditional ideals of what a bonsai is supposed to look like.

[kvan64]

So Bretts, how are you going to style this collected juniper? Shohin?

[Bretts]

Hey CD read carefully I didn't say we had to alter them to coincide with what bonsai is meant to look like but I said so we could recreate in miniature. Might sound the same but I picked those words carefully. There are certain considerations we make when creating bonsai to make them look realistic when miniaturized.
We accentuate the taper in Bonsai compared to nature to create certain feelings of perspective

I wish Kvan. I have never seen taper like this on a natural tree before.

[Mitchell]

Hey CD read carefully I didn't say we had to alter them to coincide with what bonsai is meant to look like but I said so we could recreate in miniature. Might sound the same but I picked those words carefully. There are certain considerations we make when creating bonsai to make them look realistic when miniaturized.
We accentuate the taper in Bonsai compared to nature to create certain feelings of perspective

I wish Kvan. I have never seen taper like this on a natural tree before.

Oh, I know you were not saying that, I was.

[Bretts]

Now I am confused