AusBonsai

We've been in our home here for 18 years now, and when we moved in I said to myself "that banksia is in the wrong place" for various reasons. It was well established then but has never grown much , probably due to overwhelming competition from nearby palms and other larger plants. So a few months ago I air layered the top half of the trunk and last week finally cut it and planted it in a pot as it had produced some good roots into the sphagnum moss. Today I finished the job by digging out the bottom half of the trunk and planting it in a pot. It had a very thick tap root which I had to cut to get it out.
I thought it had a lot of fibrous roots as well, but on cleaning it up after digging it out I found that almost all the fibrous roots were from the surrounding plants . On the pics you can see that not much in the way of roots remains. Can anyone tell me if the tree has much of a chance of surviving with the tap root cut short and so few other roots? Any advice or opinions would be welcome.
Cheers, Frank.

Hi Frank
I tried to recover 2 seratas last year dug out by a excavator but mine had a few more surface roots.
Despite my confidence of their survival neither of them are with me today.
Hope you have better luck

Post digging aftercare is the key.
I have dug a few native species and I have had my best success if I sit the pot that the newly dug tree is in is placed in a saucer of water for about four weeks. I have about 80% success rate with that method.

I've dug a few Banksia marginata from our garden and all have survived. In my experience banksias can survive really radical root reduction and I think this one seems to have enough roots to get through. I normally wait for warmer weather before root pruning banksias and other natives but I expect it is far warmer up there at this time of year so probably a good time for you.
My aftercare consists of potting up into my standard mix, water in then put the tree on the ground under the bench in the nursery. I expect that position maintains constant soil moisture equivalent to Watto's saucer method.

Good luck with this one. Banksias are great to work with as bonsai.