AusBonsai

Hi All
One of my Seargeant Juniper ( my shohin comp tree) has develpoed brown tips to much of the foliage. Some are nice new bright green, but others are brown
Has anyone seen this and maybe know what the cause?

Not Mites ( tapped aver paper and no signs of them, no Bugs or other horribles that i can see.
foliage has not been cut

Only happening to one tree, the one on the bench next to it is fine

Ken

I had a similar thing happen to mine and discovered it was snail damage. Are there any shiny snail tracks on the foliage ?

Brian wrote:I had a similar thing happen to mine and discovered it was snail damage. Are there any shiny snail tracks on the foliage ?

Nope. I have not seen any snails here for ages. There are Blue toung lizards around that fix them

Kne

Looks like flowers to me KC.
Being a conifer it has male flowers and separate female cones (berries). This looks like male flowers so no problem.

Could be Juniper blight.

Too much water?

Here's an image of Juniper chinensis flowers. Hopefully Ken that's all it is.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/imag ... Hng9orJANQ

We had a few cold nights in Melbourne. All my junipers bronzed and the tips looked dead. They have bounced back with spring. Is it usual that only one tree would flower and not the rest?

@daluke, we have had not much cold per se, cool tho and the weird thing is only 1 tree has done it.

looks like you have it Shibui thanks Dansai, that photo looks just like it to me. Never seen it before so really weird to me. I will watch it and make sure it does not change to anything else.

next question is does the tree have both male nad female parts? will it now develop cones or does that happen on a tree with opposite sex?

Ken

If it keeps browning and isn't flowers, I'd most definitely say root issue. Too much water would be my first thought. Please keep us updated.

Scott Roxburgh wrote:If it keeps browning and isn't flowers, I'd most definitely say root issue. Too much water would be my first thought. Please keep us updated.

Will do but doubt too wet in my substrate and on the same bench as 4 others.
Might pop it out of the pot and check though for justin

Ken

One of your Sydneysiders gave a talk on shimpaku at Canberra a few years ago. She told us that juniper has separate male and female plants but discussing it afterward several experienced growers had all seen both male flowers and female berries on their plants.
Wikipedia is sitting on the fence:

This largely species often has dioecious either male and female plants, but some individual plants produce both sexes of flowers. The blue-black berry-like cones grow to 7-12 mm in diameter, have a whitish waxy bloom, and contain 2-4 seeds; they mature in about 18 months. The male cones, 2-4 mm long, shed their pollen in early spring.

Looks like you'll just have to wait and see what sort you have Ken.

Thanks Neil
The wait will be interesting

Ken

It doesn't look like flowers to me. More like a root problem, or burn of some sort.

I'm with treeman. Dem ain't no flowers Ken. Dat dere tree, she's gotta problemo. On my Junis that flower close inspection reveals the flower being a distinctly different bit. It almost looks like a very very smal closed cone. It is clear from your pic that the actual foliage has browned.