Thanks guys. I guess the old saying about seeming to be too good to be true holds up in this case. I was dreaming of an army of shimpakus for $15 ea. It's rather confusing for a juniper newb actually. I've seen juniperus chinensis sargentii/shimpaku, juniperus chinensis shimpaku, and juniperus sargentii shimpaku. I'll work with my one plant and leave the rest on the discount rack. Thanks again.
Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. As previously stated, a LOT of the old texts referred to them as Sargent's Junipers.
In the most rudimentary of explanations, the correct way to annotate this is Juniperus chinensis cv. sargentii var. shimpaku
Juniperus is the genus and is always capitalized--just means it is a juniper; however, a lot aren't as obvious like Acer=Maples
chinensis is the speciies and just tells you that this is a "Chinese" juniper but this is a varied species already--ranging from some crawlers to uprights that can rival pines for size.
sargentii is the part that tells you it is of the sargents cultivars which tend to be sorta upright okay landscaping plants
shimpaku is the selection/variety arising from a previous annotated group of cultivars--a specifically different from the "run of the mill" sargents in some way--dark, dense foliage in this case.
However; if this isn't enough, you can plod through some taxonomy manuals/treatises--no fun and I am even into that sort of thing--only to find out that ON SOME POINTS
even the botanists are confused and still arguing over some plants "names" and what they
should be and
why. Hope this helps clear the mud down to just a cloudy murkiness.
good growing
