Wow I never knew! What species of juniper is it that is protected?
This is rugged land! Not much in the way of tourism around these parts unfortunately!
J. communis
They are known to be a difficult tree to get out and keep alive. I would def recommend ging to a bonsai society meeting in Dallas if you have time becuase there are quite a few people in your area that practice bonsai and collect Ashe juniper as well as other species of tree. I think the most important aspects are getting it out of the ground with the rootball intact and being able to mist the foliage after its collected. This site was quite sandy so it made for easy digging but it was a little difficulty to keep the root-ball together. These trees are estimated to be about 75-120 years old per inch of trunk diameter.
Trouble is I’m about 3-3.5 hours away from Dallas. Any of the older folk I’ve tried to bring it up with locally either say it’s impossible or that they used to do it but stopped because it’s not worth the trouble. Given my early stage in the practice I would definitely shy away from trees in that age group, but there appear to be more than enough 10-30 year old trees that would make for better material than I can find in a nursery. I am looking forward to the Smiths coming to Austin later this year for a conifer class though. I’ll definitely pick their brains then.
Oops I meant to put in Austin! Joseph McCoy (joeybonsai) on Instagram is experienced in collecting Ashe juniper and is a member down there!
I actually just posted a tree I got from him. He mentioned collecting once, but I got another juniper from him and he implied that he’s not a big juniper guy. I’ll shoot him a message and see if he can give me some tips. Thanks for the reminder!
