A short while ago I wrote a short article named
Wild Collecting 101, which covered the basics of collecting trees from the wild. Many of these basics have been published elsewhere and most articles stop there. In part two I will attempt to dive a little deeper into collecting techniques that have worked for me over the years and to the reasoning behind some techniques that I use.
Micro Environments
Before you collected that tree it was living in a relationship with other plants and fungus. These relationships can be major like the Mycorrhizae in the roots system or minor like living in the shade cast by a larger nearby tree or playing host to the moss and linchen growing on it’s trunk.
There are also Micro Enviroments created by the plants that are growing around the trunk and ontop of the root ball. These plants have shaded the root ball, collected dew, held in moisture, supplied nutrients, and hosted a vast collection of micro organisims since the tree was a seedling. The plants roots are intermingled with the roots of the tree, at times sharing the same water, nutrients and benificial Mycorrhizae with the very tree you are collecting.
Removing the tree from its environment is stressful enough without also ripping out these plants that form a Micro Environment that the tree is used to. Removing the plants that make up this Micro Environment will also unnecessarily disturb the fine upper most roots of the tree. When I collect I take great care to collect the whole root ball including all the plants that are growing on it. I am very careful to leave all the plants untouched as they can removed gradually as the tree strengthens and totally removed at the next repotting once the tree has become accustomed to it’s new environment.
The pictures below are of a Jack Pine I collected recently. The first two pictures are of the intact root ball as collected; the third picture is of the root ball after I have taken a chopstick to the edges and underside. I use a wooden chopstick to loosen the soil around the edges and bottom, exposing only the slightest amount of roots. The top is left completely untouched. The only roots I remove are thick ones that protrude beyond the confines of the box it will be planted in and these only if I cannot bend them to fit. Sometimes it is feasible to wire a big root to another, bending it inwards so it fits. Cutting off a root on a freshly collected tree should only be done as a last resort.
Will Heath