Please help me identify and not kill this thing

[newtreeguy]

Found this guy on a dirt bike trail, was in basically sand. I definitely hurt the root system pulling it, but it still had a good strong tap root. I’ve since put them in a root pot with well draining 90:10ish rock:soil mixture. I water from the bottom.

Not sure if a cedar or juniper, I did collect some small black seeds from small flowers.

I know it looks dead in the photos. In person it doesn’t look great but there has been some slow growth and the leaves near the core are in a fluctuating state of green.

It’s inside, morning and evening sun. Likely going to out it outside, but it did get more green when I brought it inside and put it under a grow light.

 

[NeedlesAndLeaves]

I can’t make up the species from the pictures (not to sharp pictures)
Add one with the green foliage.

You found it outside and so it belongs outside and best not inside your house.

When watering, do so on top of the soil not from below.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

You can't kill it because it's dead. Junipers and cedars, when looking like this, have been dead for a while.

Couple lessons can be learned here:
- Communis junipers are notoriously difficult to collect.
- Plants growing in sand are notoriously difficult to collect.
- The time of year for collection is spring.
- The best aftercare for plants collected is outdoors or a greenhouse. Regular windows block a bunch of light that plants require for good growth.
- Indoors the temperatures and humidity don't fluctuate as much as they do outdoors, which is great for humans, terrible for plants.
- Before you collect, make sure you have the proper container and the proper soil.
- Bottom watering only works well in full organic media, not very great in open media because the "pull" of dry rocks is pretty low if they're not touching each other properly, and even then the water can't always beat gravity. We water from above to also flush oxygen through the soil through water displacement. It's a tried and tested method, and we don't deviate from that because those deviations hardly ever work.

This plant looks like it could be somewhere between 12 and 50 years old. It could have gone for another thousand years if you left it alone.

We all started like this, no shame in the enthusiasm and you trying your best! Next time, try a couple smaller ones first to get the hang of it, make the right preparations and make sure you know what you're getting in to. Then after those do well for two years, you can go in for the nicer specimens. I'm sure that you'd be able to get your success rate up by a lot!

 

[Mike Westervelt]

Looks like sagebrush, and it does appear to be deceased.

 

[Flowerhouse]

You didn't say where in the world you collected it, so impossible to know what the native possibilities might be. Alkali sagebrush? Keep it outside, water sparingly from the top, see what happens.

 

[ShimpakuBonsai]

1. but it still had a good strong tap root.
2. Not sure if a cedar or juniper,
3. It’s inside, morning and evening sun. Likely going to out it outside, but it did get more green when I brought it inside and put it under a grow light.

@1. A strong tap root is not what you want for bonsai, you need a lot of fine roots.
@2. This is not a cedar or juniper.
@3. If you found it outside (duh) it grows outside and it needs to be outside (maybe in a shaded place to let it recover).

 

[rockm]

That thing's Deader than disco. FWIW, the bad news is that you did EVERYTHING wrong. The good news is there is no where to go buy up, IF you decide to learn from killing the tree.

 

[dmwphoto]

why did you collect it? appears dead to me

 

[penumbra]

If you put your location in your profile it will help to identify your dead plant. It will help also with further advice. Only advice I have right now is don't do that.

 

[dr.tenebris]

I'd say it's sage, and it's dead, collecting sage is super difficult because they are a desert plant that throws an INSANE taproot, if you really want one get a deep shovel grab it in fall/winter and make sure you grab a very young one.. even small sage brush (at least here in Utah) will throw roots down a foot anything with a trunk is night impossible to collect however they do make fantastic tanuki wood for juniper whips... Been wanting to collect one myself but I'm waiting