I was wondering around west of I-25 interstate in Colorado looking for moss in the Rocky Mountain front range when I spotted something interesting sticking out of the soil. It looked like a Potentilla which is quite common in the area I look for moss in. Most of the Potentilla I see a lot are a perennial type which die back down to the ground in the fall. I reached down and felt the ara underneath the leaves to see if it has a trunk and it did. I just about fell over. Yes, there was a trunk a very tiny but very woody trunk less then a 1/4″ round and the whole plant was less 3″ tall. A tiny if not miniture little tree if there ever was. Something entirely missing in my collection. Only one problem with finding it, I had nothing to get it out of the ground with. Nothing! It was growing in flat dirt to! No rocks no nothing to bother me. Only thing left to do was come back tommorrow. I decided I would place a landscaping flag next to it before I left the area. It was finally time to go home, now the little tree was growing next to a very large Ponderosa Pine tree whch should be easy to find again or so I thought. I was horribly wrong, there are thousands of Ponderosa Pines in the forest, but this Pine was growing next to the large granite boulders, surely I could find it again, couldn’t I? No I could not! I spent an hour looking for it and gave up. I came back the next day armed to the teeeth to collect the tiny little tree. 1 and a half hours latter I gave up again. The little tree was so tiny I could not find it period, no matter how many pines I looked at! I wondered around some more and found a small patch of them growing elsewhere. I collected around 4 of them and hoped that at least one would live. I got them home and potted the largest one up in a Bonsai pot in the original soil plus a little Bonsa soil trying my best not to disturb the orignal soil. This was going to be a clump style Bonsai as there serveral trunks to it. The next three were a disaster to deal with. All of the original soil fell off them leaving a long tap root on the tiny little trunks. I planted all three in small cascade pots using Bonsai soil and hoped for the best. Only one survived but what a little tree it is. The clumb style Bonsai tree did just fine. I donated the clump style tree to the Denver Botanic Gardens Bionsai Collection. The surviving single trunk tree was placed on top of gravel underneath 30% shade cloth. It seemed to like it there and there it stayed all year. It put a lot of new leaves and even produced a secondary trunk. It is now a clumo Bonsai. Apparently this species spreads by runners/shoots forming clumps. Great, no problem. I visited the wild ones and did notice they have yellow flowers when blooming. I was very excited to see this fall that my little tiny tree was turning yellow, orange and red for fall colors. The fall colors and even the yellow flowers (eventually) will match the colors in the pot. Its almost like I planned the whole thing out and it worked to perfection, but alas I cannot take credit for it. I am just plain lucky! Both of these trees are planted in Chuck Iker Bonsai Pots.
I have made two galleries for this unknown speicies: Gallery 1 is of my tree and Gallery 2 is of the Gardens tree. I will update each gallery when I get new photos of the trees.
Gallery 1:
10-22-2021
Gallery II Denver Botanicn Gardens:
