Frank Yee created this variety unintentionally in the 1970’s when he applied DDT to his entire garden. DDT is a very strong pesticide that I snow banned as it was shown to cause cancer.  The DDT killed nearly everything in Frank’s garden including all of his standard Portulacaria Afra.  Frank later noticed that some of the trees were developing corking bark.  These initial few trees were the first ‘cork bark’ variety of portulacaria afra and every cork bark that you see today is a descendent of those trees in Frank’s garden.  Frank passed in 2023 after 50 years of propagating, developing and teaching, selling and giving away trees of the variety that he created.  Read more about Frank and the origin of the Cork Bark Jade from Frank’s bonsai club, Baikoen Bonsai Kenkyukai

In 2024, in coordination with Frank’s family, I purchased 400 Cork Bark’s from Frank’s garden.  At this point I had already moved from California to Illinois so picking up 400 trees required renting a box trunk and driving them across the country.  I also needed to build a heated greenhouse to keep the trees alive in our cold Illinois winters.  Below are some photos of the cross country adventure, meeting with the Yee family in their garden, and building the greenhouse in my yard in Illinois to house the trees.  My goal now is to continue to develop and propagate this cultivar and make it more accessible to the public.  I pack and ship trees anywhere in the continental united states.  I do low volume sales so often I don’t have anything available to sell, but check out my “Shop” page or “Contact Me” if you’re looking for something in particular.