Does anyone have any experience with Desert sage brush Theyt often have some fantastic shape and small leaves

cool trees!

I do not have experience with them. I can imagine they have very long shallow rootsystems to take advantage of every drop of rain. Which would make collecting them a nightmare..

They have deep roots to reach moisture but I found one on the side of a plowed dirt road that was plowed to the side and re rooted so it had new roots just under the surface . I defoliated almost all of it and kept it in shade . It was a very knarly in shape . They back bud like crazy . I was fairly new to bonsai at the time and had a crazy job . I killed it a few months later because I was young and dumb . I dug up another one this spring . It was next to a rock so the moisture allowed for a few surface roots . I’m sad to say it didn’t make it through the transplant process
. But I’m gonna try again . Oh also they are fairly brittle because during drought seasons they die back a little and then a live band shoots through it that’s what gives him the gnarly trunk ,it has dead paper thin wood around the live veins .
Go for it .

Look at techniques to bring roots closer to the trunk, and take your time. Unless you learn from your mistakes, the next will die too. When colling pines some people work the roots for a year or two to make them harvestable. Maybe you could do tje same.

I’ll have to look up coiling . I tried something new on a honey locusts tree I found in a drainage ditch this spring . I dug down about 6 inches and applied a wire tourniquet. Covered it and applied mulch . I will go back at the end of the year and see if roots form above the wire . The thing about desert sage is so much deadwood around the live vein.

Stopped and took a few pictures of a few larger ones I see all the time