The Banfield Broom

I have been a plant geek for as long as I can remember.  When I was very young, I remember being very interested in wilflowers.  At the age of 10, I began gardening.  Of course, I did not then have access to the kind of horticulture that I do now.  My gardening experience consisted largely of mail-order catalogs like Gurneys.  There is certainly nothing wrong with that kind of gardening, but the plants that really crank my turkeys these days can't be found in catalogs like that.

In 2002, I began working as a caretaker in a botanical garden.  That changed everything.  I had ready access to plantspeople of every variety.  It was then that I learned about broom hunting and dwarf conifers.  

A local conifer nurseryman has since become a friend and mentor.  He told me of a broom on Interstate 84 in Gresham, OR.  It is very easy to find- just look to the south side of the freeway, just West of 181st avenue.  The broom is a very compact one, forming a doughnut-like growth at the top of a Douglas fir beside the freeway.  

Of course, the problem with this broom is that it is in the middle of a city.  Using a shotgun to retrieve scions is out of the question- especially since the tree is in a school zone.

I tried a number of things to get scions.  First, I tried an arrow with a hook-like head.  Since the broom was so high, I was not able to get the arrow up to the broom with enough force to enter it.  I actually tried a couple of versions of that idea, to no avail.  The whole time, I was pretty worried about the cops.  A bow and arrow is a weapon- and you aren't really allowed to discharge weapons in town.  I thought about using a shotgun on New Years Eve, which proabably would have worked.  It would have blended in with the illegal fireworks that people set off.  I was too worried about getting caught, however.

Last summer, I came up with another idea.  I purchased six helium balloons, two spools of dental floss, a spool of strong nylon string, and a guitar string.  A friend and I tied the balloons on to the wire loop, which was in turn tied to the nylong string.  Each of us held a line of dental floss in order to steer the apparatus toward the broom above.

The idea was to steer the wire loop to the broom, where we could cinch it down with the nylon string and rip twigs out of the broom.  (This was a test run, since it is better to take the scions in the winter.)

It failed.  Miserably.

The balloons got stuck in the tree about 20 feet above the sidewalk.  I couldn't get them down.  I was responsible for unsightly littering.

Finally, last summer, I ran into the climbing instructor for the local IBEW.  I hired him to teach me to climb trees, which has turned out to be pretty useful.  Have a closer look at the pic above- I'm in the tree.

I climbed the tree to a point about 12 feet below the broom.  I then had a friend tie a pole pruner onto my climbing rope.  I hauled it up and cut two small branches out of the broom.  I was struck by how much larger the broom seemed, once I was up in the tree.  It was at least eight feet in diameter.  The pieces kept getting stuck in lower branches on the tree- a common problem that I've encountered in scion retrieval.

I eventually got the two branches to fall to the ground and rappelled out of the tree.

The whole climb took three hours.  I was utterly exhausted by the end.  Mostly, it was difficult to get my lanyard around the trunk.  Particularly on the lower third of the tree, it was very difficult to get the lanyard all the way around the truck and through the branches.  By the end of the climb, my arms felt like rubber.

This was on a Saturday morning.  The broom happens to be across the street from the IBEW union hall.  I didn't know it at the time, but there were guys over there watching me climb.  I'm glad I didn't know.  It would have been embarrassing...

Just as I touched the ground, and Portland Police officer drove up and asked what was going on.  I told him that I was propagating the growth in the top of the tree.  He said something that I couldn't really hear (the freeway was nearby and the noise was deafening)  I just nodded and he drove off.  I am not sure if it was legal for me to climb that tree or not.  I know one thing, though.  I'm not doing it again.  It was brutal.


Here's a closeup of the folliage:

In order to propagate a broom, you need to use a rootstock that is compatible with it.  For Douglas fir, I use seedlings of the interior form that I dig up on my dad's property, since they are hardier than the coastal variety.    

I use what is known as a side veneer graft, where you slice off a flap of bark on the side of your rootstock.  You cut the scion into a wedge that will then fit inside the flap.  I use a budding strip- a special piece of latex rubber meant for grafting- to hold the scion on to the stock and create a moisture-proof seal.

After grafting, I put the tree into a plastic bag for six weeks to prevent drying.  After that point, I have to wait until the trees push new growth in the spring.

I sure hope that this graft takes, because I won't be making that insane climb again :)