Page 50 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2017Q2

Reclaiming its

wild heritage

JUNIPERUS SABINA

ALPINE WIND By Danilo Scursatone, Italy

Photos by Nicoleta Baciu, Italy
Translation by Danilo Scursatone and Joe Grande

ome years ago, in a well-known bonsai Many years passed and the Juniperus was still there
nursery, I was struck by a yamadori Juniperus in the nursery, given its high price and the difficulties
sabina collected in the Pennine Alps whose for a possible bonsai shaping. Time passed and the
accentuated features immediately took me Juniperus sabina is now very well adapted to life in
Sback to the environment from which it “captivity.”
came. I was fascinated. Constant fertilizing, watering and repotting were
The curves of its mighty trunk, scarce branching, favorable to its growth until it was transformed into a
deadwood (jin and shari) and its considerable age, told garden bush. The Juniperus was still very nice, but had
of a life lived in an extreme environment where winds, lost the link to the natural environment where it had
heavy snowfalls, freezing, and nutritional deficiencies grown and therefore its primordial charm.
left their unequivocal signs of trauma. The yamadori had become like a cultivar, similar
A mountain lover like me could not remain to many other cultivars grown to adorn some garden
indifferent to such a call, a living entity from the Alps, of some house. The winds of the Alps no longer
was here in a lowland nursery to tell me its story and flowed violently through its branches. The signs of
the environment from which it came. the environment, to which it belonged were hidden
by dense foliage.

48 | BCI | April/May/June 2017