Plantmaker,

I have read that it is a strong upright grower that rarely ever need staking.

I have that info stored some where but cannot seem to find it.

Sorry I can't help you further.

Dave

Thanks, Dave -

I just could not find any information anywhere about its growth habit.

Regards,

PlantMarker

I can't even find anything at all to suggest this variety even exists ;-)

It certainly isn't a validly published name.

Resin

Resin,

Google knows about it and so does Iseli.

Wonder if it could take zone 5b with protection...Ummm the wheels are turning.

Hit the link.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Juniperus recurva var. butanica

This one will find its way into my garden. The bark is, indeed, quite cinnamon-colored. It creates a nice foil against the weeping, blue-green foliage.

I do hope that it supports its leader on its own.

PlantMarker

after observing the Iseli image, I wonder how well it would deal with heavy wet/frozen snow or ice loads.

Marshall

Sorry to bring up an old post.

I came across this weeping wonder at a local nursery. It had an Iseli tag and was only $35. Haven't bought it yet but I'm sure pondering and thinking about making a spot for it in the yard. Can't tell if it's ugly or not but I love the long soft thread like foliage.

I'm curious about the growth habit and I'm wondering If anyone has a picture of an older specimen. There's not much information online.

I asked the nursery owner about it. She said that she doesn't know anything about it and that she probably bought it because it was cheap.

Makes me wonder if Iseli is trying to get rid of them and why. Maybe its just incredibly fast growing and easy to propagate.

Well, what do you think? =) Snatch it up?

Just a few more photos to add to what little info is on the web.

Foliage close up

I wonder how it would hold up in my southern Indiana humidity.

Like Resin said before, Juniperus recurva var. butanica doesn't exist.
It looks like a Juniperus recurva var. recurva to me...

what does it matter??

i you have space... its one cool specimen.. especially at that price ...

i mean really ... what you see.. is what you get... it will be thin above.. a nice ground cover below.. skirt ...

its bluish ..

and in 10 years.. at 3.50 per year.. get rid of it.. if space is lacking ...

crikey man.. how in the heck did you walk away ...

what more do you want.. an engraved invitation??

ken

LOL, Ken.
I would have snapped it up also....in a New York second.
Mike

I have one that was labeled the same way - it's been in the ground about three years and I have it staked lightly. It's a slow grower. I'll try to get a photo of it. I like the texture and color and it contrasts well with other plants.

Sara

I've been looking for that since spotting the picture of a mature one in conifers around the world. You better buy it or I'm driving to Indiana and buying it!
Seems to be disagreement about the relation between it and R. coxii, but they both have that elegant look to them. However, they should both only be zn 7 hardy so I don't why an Indiana nursery bought them. Gossler told me on the phone that their plant is sometimes injured in the Willamette valley! They had a few at the nursery but seemed to give me the run around on the phone about selling one. Call back to speak to so and so, I called back and so and so wasn't there. Maybe they were too big or something.

Ha ha, I couldn't stop thinking about the tree so I managed to get out of work early just so I could go buy it. I was actually broke from buying a filter system for my new pond in progress but after telling my wife how you folks thought I was crazy for leaving it at the garden center, my wife ended up buying it for me.

I absolutely love, love, this tree. It's so different from anything I have and its so soft to the touch for a juniper.

I've rigged it with an alarm system just in case David tries sneaking it out of my yard.

David, I wish you the best of luck in finding one. If I stumble across another I'll let you know and ship it to you.

I've seen it listed as both zone 6 and 7. Iseli has it listed as 6. I have a slightly protected area close to the house where I'm going to plant it. Here's hoping it does well in my climate.

Sara, I would love to see a picture of yours if you find the time.

Thanks!

Congratulations on the new acquisition, Garen. It's always exciting to find something a little out of the ordinary, and this one appears to fit into that category. Hope it does well for you, and would love to see pictures of it, planted in its new home.

Good luck with it Garen. If you can find a copy of Conifers Around the World, check it out for the picture of a mature one.

Here's the mature Juniperus recurva!

Maybe it was the J. coxii I'm thinking of it. It looked like a rotund, finely branched Cupressus cashmeriana. It doesn't seem like the plant in the nursery will look like your picture when mature.
More like this:

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.duchyofcornwallnursery.co.uk/plants-and-flowers/conifers/juniperus-recurva-var--coxii/c-pco-junreco--h02/

It's interesting that the picture of J. recurva ('drooping Juniper') shown above from CATW doesn't show a pendulous appearance.

Too bad, CATW doesn't mention J. recurva var. recurva. Their picture of J. recurva var. coxii (J. coxii) does look similar to the plant at the nursery though.

Alex

I have a Juniperus recurva var coxii. It is very strongly apically dominant, much more so than the plant pictured, and the side branches are not quite as strongly pendulous either. I would say that it is a bit less weepy (so far) than the plant on the Duchy of Cornwall page you linked, but the tree shape is right. Who knows, maybe it will get weepier later on. It is currently in a 5 gallon pot but will definitely be awarded a choice spot in my garden. I guess I ought to remember to take a few cuttings off it this fall for David :-) or maybe I already did last fall, I can't remember now. I also have the strongly weeping form similar to the plant pictured; it's too small for cuttings right now though.

Look what I found, at the excellent Colesville Nursery in Ashland, VA:

{{gwi:689109}}

The ever useful AL Jacobson notes that a big wholesale nursery in Ohio sold this or something very similar in the 1970s, so some forms of it must be hardy. OTOH Gossler told me that it was barely hardy in the Willamette Valley and gave me a run-around suggesting they were reluctant to sell one to the east coast...so...who knows. Colesville said it's been ok for the past 2 winters, but they were hardly worth being called winters around here.

Garen of Indiana, are you still around?
Sadly, it seems like Gossler were right about this plant being barely hardy enough for the Willamette Valley. Mine died. Dead as a doornail dead. And I thought, well, this was a freak winter...I'll contact Colesville to get a replacement. Guess what? Their remaining stock died, presumably even in an unheated hoop house! (You can see their nursery from 95 and I've driven by many times in winter because I have relatives in VA Beach. It looks pretty closed up. I can't believe they would have left it out...particularly in this winter.)

If there's any saving grace it's that my Juniperus rigida has a similar look...some would even argue more exotic, and was fully hardy this winter.

Well, if a nursery in Ohio was once selling it, maybe there are hardier clones around. That's my thinking...I feel like with the high elevation stuff, what often gets collected is the lowest, most accessible plants, which are the least hardy. And our main source of rarities wholesalers, the PNW, seldom has winters bad enough to weed out the weaker strains.

Mine, I must say, looked only partly dead at the end of winter and I didn't even mention it before because I naively thought, oh, it will pull through. But the greenish foliage was just some kind of ghost because the main stem and roots were totally dead. A similar thing happened with my Erica arborea alpinas, the outer foliage took longer to die than the core of the plant.

Many of my broad leaved evergreens though, are sprouted from below. THANK GOODNESS I had great snow cover this winter. (better than the DC area, we got more in the early storms and it melted more slowly) Even my Eucalyptus is returning from the bottom of the trunk.

Darnit...I thought I'd found the mythic hardy form from Scanlon Nurseries or whoever it was in Ohio:

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=279626&isprofile=0amp;
But I guess not:

http://livingcollections.org/mobot/taxon/279626?tab=accessions

The sell sheet still says zone 6:
http://www.iselinursery.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=299%3Ajuniperus-recurva-var-butanica&catid=40%3Aconifers&Itemid=83

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, May 7, 14 at 11:34

the NCSU arboretum has a small, recent one:

http://jcra.ncsu.edu/horticulture/our-plants/results.php?search=Juniperus+recurva+bhutanica (picture from last year)

But they also have a species that to me, looks intermediate between J. rigida and Iseli's J. recurva. J. pingii. And it's been there a lot longer. One theory I have is that the J. recurvas might have started dying of phytophthora the moment they landed on the east coast, and thus the winter damage is actually a cryptic sign of a plant already in declining health. As I said it seemed to die from the roots up.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://jcra.ncsu.edu/horticulture/our-plants/results.php?search=Juniperus+pingii

This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, May 7, 14 at 11:45

No good news here for mine. It has been officially added to my RIP list with many others due to the hard winter. So long soft, floppy, noodle tree.

Yeah, the Juniperus rigida is a good alternative. I've seen a few awesome monster growing in a park in my area. Pretty cool looking. I was actually thinking of getting a Juniperus communis 'Horstmann' instead. It has a similar look as well and should be even more cold hardy.

"So long soft, floppy, noodle tree"

LOL. That's how I felt as well!

Thanks for the followup, and for the tip. It would be cool if someone would do a Juniperus rigida X J. recurva hybrid...but about as likely as random stranger giving me a million dollars.