This Japanese white pine, PInus pentaphylla, was collected in the Japanese mountains many years ago. It was styled in Japan and eventually exported to Europe in 2010. In many exhibits where it was shown soon after that it won major awards, mainly in Poland and Czechia. The tree was owned by Piotr Czerniachowski from Poland.
Somehow this pine found it's way into my garden in December 2012. It had lost some of it's former shape and I had to do some work right away: plucking of old needles, removing some wire which had bitten in seriously already, removing a few small dead branches, jinnign branch on the lower tree. The foliage did not look too healthy which was mainly due to winter color.
I was told by Piotr that this tree needed repotting badly. So I found a new container for it made by Walter Venne from Germany. It was very difficult to get the tree out which indeed had not been repotted probably since way more than ten years.The usual adakdama was hard like cement. I thought I had to break the pot to get it out. Well, finally it gout out without breaking, but using severe force.
Then the rootball was loosened up. Such trees are quite problematic as they have to get repotted at one point but the risk is high. I could have lost the tree. The tree was potted into modern substrate - baked loam with some rough peat. Even after fifteen years without repotting it will go out easily and we will never have this problem as with akadama again. I tilted the tree upwards to the left.
In May it showed that it had not minded the repotting - the contrary, it looked very happy and green. Normally I would say that a tree after all this has to rest until next vegetation period. Well, a week ago it looked as healthy as a white pine ever could. So I decided to do the whole refurbishing right away. Now I am happy for the time being.
