This luscious Needle juniper turned up on Juan Andrade’s latest facebook post. Juan is (or was?) an apprentice at Bonsai Aichien in Japan, where this tree resides. BTW, we featured a Before, During and After post by Juan exactly one month ago.
Don’t be misled by the title; this is not another trip back into our archives, though the second tree in this post is from an earlier bark post. The rest of the photos are all originals for us.
It has been over three years since we devoted a whole post to just Needle junipers (Juniperus rigida). This juniper species may not be as common as Shimpaku, especially here in the West, but the Needle juniper is represented by some of the most magnificent bonsai on earth. Especially in Japan, which is where the trees in this post are from.
I scanned this one off of our 2010 Bonsai Calendar. A little fuzzy, but still a great bonsai. Speaking of calendars, our 2014 Bonsai and Japanese garden calendars are now in stock.
This one is borrowed from Bonsai Tonight, which happens to be among the very creme of crop when it comes to bonsai blogs. The tree is “one of many great trees in a garden near the Shinpukuji Temple in Okazaki. The owner of this collection has shown at least one tree in each in Kokufu bonsai exhibit for the past 20 years.”
Peter Tea (another Bonsai Aichien apprentice) shot this literati Needle juniper at the 82nd Meifu-ten Bonsai Show. Fantastic pot, but a strange choice considering its depth, which very unusual for a literati style tree. But then it’s hard to argue with a tree chosen for one of the oldest and most distinguished bonsai shows in Japan.
Is that Michael’s hand? This photo, which should give you a pretty good idea of what Needle juniper foliage looks like, is from Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai. Michael is, among other things, one of the first Americans to apprentice in Japan, as well as one of our most accomplish bonsai artists and an excellent writer. Don’t believe me? Check out his Post-Dated – The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. It’s a great read.
