SPLITTING A JUNIPER

CLICK any images to enlarge. CLICK back arrow to return.

Our February club meeting was held at Ann's house where she demonstrated the splitting of a collected split trunk juniper specimen. The right trunk is quite long but has some interesting movement in the upper half. She wanted her tree base to be just above her shoulder (in the picture above). This could be done by air layering. Or you could keep the live vein and coil it to fit inside the pot. Executing this second method is Ann's goal for this demonstration. She will need to preserve this live vein, hollow out as much wood as possible, wrap it in raffia, coil the vein, and bury it in the training pot. Ann wants to make this into a bunjin style bonsai. Bunjin is a difficult style to define but most know one when they see one. Through the wonders of the Internet I will let John Naka define Bunjin .


Ann is careful to maintain the live veins for both trunks as she splits the root ball. Sawsalls are not just for cutting studs in a wall.


And some serious chisel work, all ways preserving as many roots as possible.


There was a lot of rotted wood between the two trunks. You can now see the split is nearly complete. But the big block of wood under the right trunk needs to be removed.


The Bunjin is free at last!


The main trunk is now back in the pot.



Ann begins cutting wood out of the live vein starting near where the base of her Bunjin will be. This vein must be thin enough to allow it t0 be coiled into the pot.



Here we see the root ball.
I will update this post if Ann gets some pictures of the raffia and potting.