I’m going along with the “dead tree” theme of the week, but doing a little prognosticating at the same time. Bert and Holly showed you tree demise on site; I’m going to show you tree demise in the making. We can call this “dead plant walking.”
I’ve done a few WOW postings in the past, often with a focus at what you might find at a nursery or big box store. Here’s a recent find at an unnamed BBS, in the “topiary” section:
Unless you intend to have a giant stake as part of your topiary statement, this tree (actually a juniper) will morph into a prostrate form before your very eyes. Fortunately, it probably won’t live long once transplanted since it’s so overdue for potting up that the pot has split:
You can just imagine the nest of woody roots fusing into a functionless mass, can’t you?
Run, don’t walk, away from nursery plants like this. You’ll be glad you did.
So the root mass may look like the pom pom multi-meatballs on a stick plant this is supposed to be?
Perhaps one can stick the rootball once sliced and diced into a mound of soil and have the stem rest upon the ground and one can have a few meatballs on a stick planting!
Yikes. Or, plant the whole root mass at an angle so that each of the little pompoms stands vertical — instant tree-on-a-hillside silhouette, and no stake necessary! Poor little tree.
I see far too many topiaries at growers’ nurseries that are last gasp efforts to make a buck out of overgrown junipers. Oh well, it’s probably better for them to die quickly since few topiaries are maintained by the homeowner and most grow out into even more hideous shapes.