I recently picked up several nursery stock plants for practice. There is one juniper that has a lot of potential and I am honestly a bit intimidated to make any decisions as I think this one actually has some potential. All my other trees need a lot of “help” so I didn’t feel bad jumping in and making some potential mistakes. It is a “Parsoni” juniper which as I understand it is a variant of a Chinese juniper. It appears quite healthy but is fairly rootbound. Part of me wants to repot it and hold off styling till next season but the other part of me wants to style it so I have at least one tree that will hopefully at least resemble a bonsai:) I think there is a long of potential in the thicker of the two trunks, probably a cascade or semi cascade. I could use some suggestions on identifying the best trunk line, defining branch and apex branch. It was challenging to get good photos of structure without pruning but I think you can see the main branches. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! (Either the report vs style or identification of primary features)
I would repot first. To allow you to find any nebari that might be hiding below the soil still which you can use to help guide your first styling once you find the best base and trunk line to go with it.
-Donald
I agree with Donald that you should repot first. In addition to finding any nebari, you will most likely reinvigorate this rootbound juniper (may take 2 years) and will get the most stressful operation with the highest risk to branch loss or death out of the way before you put a bunch of time and effort into styling.
Yes,repot first. Resist any temptation to prune the roots. Junipers hate to lose roots, so keep them and keep the strength of the tree to let it recover over the next TWO years.
So I took the suggestions to repot first and ran into an interesting situation with the root mass. It almost appears that this juniper was growing horizontally and then when it was repotted a chunk of the roots were trimmed from the trunk and it was repotted. There are a large amount of roots coming from fairly high up the trunk. I’m assuming the slight inverse taper on the trunk is due to that root growth. Planning to leave the roots intact and just repot in bonsai soil and see how it does.
