Repotting Juniper With Long Roots

gilbycantu

I have a juniper that I would like to plant in a shallow pot but it has a really long thick root that seems to be growing straight down. When I first began bonsai I encountered a juniper with the same problem and just trimmed it down and the tree died. What should I do? Should I trim a little and wait & see how it's doing and then trim a little more? Can anyone help?

--Gilbert

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Jay

Gilbert, I would wait till the spring. I realize you are in Texas, but this is probable not the best time for you to be working on the roots of this tree. When you do trim the roots, remember to trim the top approx the same amount. The tree needs to be in balance.

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gilbycantu

Actually I was going to wait til spring but this is one of those questions I have been meaning to ask. I have several junipers with these same kind of long roots but I haven't done anything with them.

BonifaceVIII

Sorry to intrerupt. But I have a juniper, and I never knew this: Junipers have a tap root? I've transplanted a nursery stock Rug Juniper and I didn't see one...

gilbycantu

What is a tap root?

DavidN

Gil

If this juniper was grown from seed (doubtful as most should be done from cutting) then a tap root would be the main root that it develps once it grows out of its seed. This root basically grows straight down and fattens up the quickest. This main root would only have a few of shoots of smaller roots. In bonsai this is not ideal. We are after a spread of roots around the base of the trunk to form good surface root spread (nebari). Underneath this we want fine fibrous roots which is what feeds the tree.

Now your problems of long roots. This will need to be fixed but will be sometime before all of them can be eliminated. Obviously wait for spring before you try this. Find out how many of these roots you need to eliminate. This is what I would do with juniper stock or other conifers. Because we want a fibrous root system close to the trunk then we want to eliminate any heavy root directly underneath the base of the trunk first. So with junipers I would eliminate one or two of the long roots if there was four or five of them. It is usually a tough call to make if I can't see the tree in person. Probably eliminate a couple of the longer roots with less roots on them or maybe one of the larger roots with more roots on them. Does that kind of make sense. Make sure you remove the long root entirely. I would seal the wound to protect from any rot. Trim the longer roots a little bit as well. I believe that repotting this juniper into a very open mix would be a must to getting a fibrous root system to grow. Remove some folage as well. This is probably the safest way to accomplish the removal of these long roots.

I hope this helps in some way

David

zeb

Gil,
I'm just adding to what David wrote.

Sometimes you may find a better spread of roots from below the surface and it's better to cut the roots upper in the trunk rather than to cut the whole "tap root" away.


Zeb

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DavidN

Thanks zeb for the addition. An inspection of the roots is vital to figuring out whether to cut or not to cut.

David