A Friend and I dug a huge clump of the stuff from someone's front garden. This is one piece of it. I've got two more but they aren't as big as this one. We were told it was 55 years old at that time (this was in 2005). Apparently the owner of the house planted it when the house was built in 1955. He finally got fed up hacking it down only to have it shoot up all over the place - including 5 metres away from the main clump (we followed a root)! It took us two days hard labour in the middle of summer trying to get it out. There was a big problem. Right alongside it was a fence, and directly under the fence was a reinforced concrete wall (just under the soil level). Eventually, after a lot of sweat, cursing and swearing, we gave up, wrapped a chain around it, hooked it to the back of a ute and drove off.
When we got the clump back home, we used a chainsaw to cut it into wedges. There were a few thick roots on it, but no feeder roots. It took nearly 18 months before it put out any foliage - there were a couple of shoots, but they died off. Gradually, it came back though and during this summer, it looked a lot better than it does in the photo.
Now to the 'Hidden Secret'. Not everything is as it seems. Oh yes, it is a genuine tree and what you see hasn't been fabricated in any way, BUT, there is no back to it! Where we cut the clump into wedges left completely bare wood on the back, and this rotted away from the inside. About three months ago, I decided to reduce the dead wood on the back, but after I'd removed about 2cm, it was like mush inside, I scraped it all out and it went right back to the live tissue of that front face. In reality it is a Facade. There is no depth in it. It's in its 'winter coat' at the moment, so tomorrow, I'll take a couple of photos of it and show you what I'm talking about.
Anyway, this is what it looked like in September last year:
