Page 50 - BSAM 2016 Q4

48 | BCI |
April/May/June 2017
Reclaiming its wild heritage
JUNIPERUS SABINA
ALPINE WIND
Some years ago, in a well-known bonsai nursery, I was struck by a yamadori Juniperus sabina collected in the Pennine Alps whose accentuated features immediately took me back to the environment from which it
came. I was fascinated.
e curves of its mighty trunk, scarce branching,
deadwood (jin and shari) and its considerable age, told of a life lived in an extreme environment where winds, heavy snowfalls, freezing, and nutritional de ciencies le their unequivocal signs of trauma.
A mountain lover like me could not remain indi erent to such a call, a living entity from the Alps, was here in a lowland nursery to tell me its story and the environment from which it came.
By Danilo Scursatone, Italy Photos by Nicoleta Baciu, Italy
Translation by Danilo Scursatone and Joe Grande
Many years passed and the Juniperus was still there in the nursery, given its high price and the di culties for a possible bonsai shaping. Time passed and the Juniperus sabina is now very well adapted to life in “captivity.”
Constant fertilizing, watering and repotting were favorable to its growth until it was transformed into a garden bush. e Juniperus was still very nice, but had lost the link to the natural environment where it had grown and therefore its primordial charm.
e yamadori had become like a cultivar, similar to many other cultivars grown to adorn some garden of some house. The winds of the Alps no longer owed violently through its branches. e signs of the environment, to which it belonged were hidden by dense foliage.