Japanese Maple Ideas

[Alcaviator]

Hello, I just bought this maple and I’m having a hard time figuring out the best way to shape it up/style it. What do y’all think? Thanks in advance!

 

[Forsoothe!]

The 'Taters are going to insist that you air layer off the top to make it shorter, but that's because they're all gnomes, 3 feet tall and they don't have much vision. Regular people like trees that have a trunk you can see is a tree. The older a tree is, the more the branches droop. You can make this tree look older by bringing the branches down, making them droop. That's a job for wire and/or guy lines. It's a lot easier to see what you have and wire a tree without leaves, so this is your lucky day because autumn is just around the corner. When the leaves turn color you can cut them off at the base of the leaf and plan your winter-wiring. The wire can stay on while the tree lignifies over winter and come off just as the buds begin to swell in March/April depending upon your local weather.

 

[Alcaviator]

The 'Taters are going to insist that you air layer off the top to make it shorter, but that's because they're all gnomes, 3 feet tall and they don't have much vision. Regular people like trees that have a trunk you can see is a tree. The older a tree is, the more the branches droop. You can make this tree look older by bringing the branches down, making them droop. That's a job for wire and/or guy lines. It's a lot easier to see what you have and wire a tree without leaves, so this is your lucky day because autumn is just around the corner. When the leaves turn color you can cut them off at the base of the leaf and plan your winter-wiring. The wire can stay on while the tree lignifies over winter and come off just as the buds begin to swell in March/April depending upon your local weather.

Thanks for the reply! I’m new to maples and want to try as good as I can to give it a good shape up vs what I’m receiving.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Bring the branches down 30° and fattening up a little...

 

[Alcaviator]

Bring the branches down 30° and fattening up a little...
View attachment 392478

Whats the best time to prune and whats the best method to ramify them so i can fatten up that foliage in the areas i want. definitely doing what you are saying tho. i will wire when they fall and remove wire before they bud. Just trying to figure out my best technique to cause more foliage and ramification if its species specific. I usually cut right past the first pair of leaves to cause ramification just don't want to do it wrong

 

[BobbyLane]

bending the branches down wont make it look old, it will just look contrived. because its still a young tree, with a spindly long trunk and spindly branches. its poor material, but gotta start somewhere. also, the tree doesnt look in proportian because its too long and the canopy is too high. hastily bending everything down is a way to a quick, forced canopy, but it will never look right, just a quick fix.
google japanese maple, look at some good ones and study the proportians and you will begin to see why your tree will inevitably need shortening and probably bulking up either in a grow bed or training box.

actually, airlayering the trunk just under where it splits into two is a quicker way to a better more in proportian tree, it just makes sense.
this is what a natural twin trunk with some girth looks like

 

[Shibui]

There are a thousand and one or more different possibilities for this tree. It is up to the owner to decide what they want based on starting material, vision and time frame.
The tall, thin trunk with a spreading canopy is a quick fix and would satisfy many beginners.
Others will seek a more dynamic trunk and branching so layering or radical trunk chops but those have a longer development period, probably 5-10 years min and no guarantee of success.

What do you want and how long are you willing to spend to achieve it?

Pruning can be done any time of year. Major pruning is easier in winter when there's no leaves and you can see the structure better but trees respond and recover better when they are active.
Wiring can be done any time of year but it is easier to see in winter when there's no leaves.
Ramification is achieved by regular trim and grow cycles. Cut back and allow the new shoots to grow then repeat.

 

[Forsoothe!]

Sorry Bobby, but air layering is not a starting point for a beginner, and immediately striving to make somebody else's perfect tree is wrong-headed. Crawl, stand, walk, run. I only give advice now, that is useful at the level that the OP is at, now. I wouldn't give you the same advice, and you wouldn't acquire stock that didn't already have characteristics you demand. I want the OP to be happy with the tree ASAP such that the endeavor is continued and someday down the road tries to make a Bobby tree, or maybe a Forsoothe tree, or maybe both. In fact, the one thing that is predictable is that after acquiring some number of trees we all seek to try "something else" because initially we tend to have a lot of trees that all look like each other. I have a Bobby tree or two, and I'd bet that you have a Too Tall Jones somewhere on your benches...

 

[BobbyLane]

So many of these 'maple starter' threads get started and we never see 'what happened next' so yeh maybe best advise is to design a quicky to get newbies loving what they created and sticking around i guess

 

[Forsoothe!]

Yes, and remember that the trademark Bobby tree is the product of a lot of years of practice. You take for granted that others can do it, and I'm here to tell you that it's a lot harder than you think. It takes a lot of skills that uses up a lot of stock on the way to being good enough to grab a tree and butcher it into a highly stylized 'Tater in one giant step. It's what people can do by the end of a career. Sometimes. Just sometimes.

 

[BobbyLane]

the issue with people not being able to become more creative is that they dont take the hobby seriously enough. they dont buy enough trees, they dont even look at trees. they rarely look at good bonsai online either. most will come to the forum and expect everyone to work and style their tree for them. i see members who are 500 posts in and still asking when to chop, when to repot, how to style.
for the few that buy many trees, as in many sticks in pots, still there is no drive to progress and create better trees even after 3-5 years in.
depending on how much ambition someone has, i think it does help in a way to be more critical in what theyre starting with, they should be told that what theyre starting with is just a 'starter' tree and not a bonsai, we dont want to give people a false sense of belief. bonsai should be progressive. when i was told a few years ago my stick would never be like the tree i envisioned, i didn walk away, i went and got better material. its not a competition but its human nature to be competitive at least where im from.

 

[BobbyLane]

Fwiw ive never been a proponent of air layers. this season i attempted what was only my second layer attempt on a few beech trees. my first air layer attempt on a zelkova that had poor roots was a complete failure. i was advised to ground layer it because the roots were 'horrendous'. after that, nearly every single tree i bought had very good nebari, i never had to ground layer again and nobody could ever tell me my tree has shit roots.

 

[rockm]

Whats the best time to prune and whats the best method to ramify them so i can fatten up that foliage in the areas i want. definitely doing what you are saying tho. i will wire when they fall and remove wire before they bud. Just trying to figure out my best technique to cause more foliage and ramification if its species specific. I usually cut right past the first pair of leaves to cause ramification just don't want to do it wrong

Best way to decide what advice to take is to look at photos of responders' trees -if there are any.

Bobby Lane has excellent deciduous trees. Do a search on him. his techniques are not all that hard to learn and are pretty much the way most other bonsai people make deciduous trees with character. An air layer is a bit advanced, but a drastic reduction (in late winter) isn't. It's within your grasp. It entails drastically reducing the trunk, probably to five inches or so, waiting for new shoots to show and choosing appropriate apex and branching. It's not rocket science, but intimidates some folks (who refer to this as a "tater").

The advice you've been given on keeping the height and bending out the branches is not the best. It results, as you can see, in a tree that looks pretty much like a sapling. It can also result in broken branches, since thicker maple branches tend to be mostly un wire-able and prone to snapping in two when bent.

Great deciduous trees aren't developed without a lot of work. Treating them like a pine--bending existing branching and wiring insipid "movement" into them-- doesn't work very well with maples. It can produce a tree that's mildly uninspiring, but safe. The reduction, grow out, wire, reduction, grow out technique builds believable, natural looking branching.

Question is do you want to learn how to construct a deciduous maple bonsai, or are you happy with something that is just OK? Either answer is fine, but one leads to more learning, the other to an acceptable, but static looking tree.

 

[badatusernames]

My best suggestion is to wait and look around. There's no rush. That way you can see trees with similar trunks, start picking up on how trees are worked and grown, etc. There are a number of directions you can take this, from letting it continue to grow and mature to chopping it to a stump in spring (probably not that at this stage).

As you poke around, you'll see whose trees you like and whose you don't. That will allow you to decide for yourself whose advice is best to take into consideration, as well as provide you with a variety of options to consider, not to mention time - I would think early spring would be a great time to get started with whatever you decide upon.

 

[QuantumSparky]

I'm still new to this but I'm definitely in the "Airlayer that thing" group. I'm currently in the first chop > grow out stage with my JM and it's going quite well. Although if I had that tree, I'd be tempted to just style it at the current height and call it a day, I think that would be somewhat of a waste of time for short-term satisfaction. We don't want to scare you away by telling you to do drastic work on the tree which you might not be comfy with yet, but in the long run you'll end up with a much nicer looking tree IMO. To my eyes, the current proportions are wrong on that tree and it'll take a lot of effort to make it look natural unless you get it shorter. The reason I like the airlayer idea is because you'll end up with 2 trees and you'll have the benefit of :

1) One of the trees will have great proportions and foliage, and
2) The other will be a stump, which will serve as a learning opportunity for you to see backbudding in action as well as letting you style it almost "from the ground up".

And since you'll then have 2 trees, it'll give you more to do if you find yourself itching for more Whichever one ends up being your 'primary' or preferred tree, will benefit by the fact that you'd then have an "experiment tree" if you want to test different methods on.

 

[rockm]

I'm still new to this but I'm definitely in the "Airlayer that thing" group. I'm currently in the first chop > grow out stage with my JM and it's going quite well. Although if I had that tree, I'd be tempted to just style it at the current height and call it a day, I think that would be somewhat of a waste of time for short-term satisfaction. We don't want to scare you away by telling you to do drastic work on the tree which you might not be comfy with yet, but in the long run you'll end up with a much nicer looking tree IMO. To my eyes, the current proportions are wrong on that tree and it'll take a lot of effort to make it look natural unless you get it shorter. The reason I like the airlayer idea is because you'll end up with 2 trees and you'll have the benefit of :

1) One of the trees will have great proportions and foliage, and
2) The other will be a stump, which will serve as a learning opportunity for you to see backbudding in action as well as letting you style it almost "from the ground up".

And since you'll then have 2 trees, it'll give you more to do if you find yourself itching for more Whichever one ends up being your 'primary' or preferred tree, will benefit by the fact that you'd then have an "experiment tree" if you want to test different methods on.

Getting two trees is NOT a really good reason to air layer anything. IF you're successful, (And isn't as easy as people who haven't done it think), you wind up with two of the same problem--this trunk is long straight and boring. Two of the same long straight boring trunks would require the same reductions to make them useable and induce movement into them to make them believable as bonsai.

Unless you air layer the more interesting section near the top as Mr. Lane suggested, the process isn't worth the time and can be counterproductive.

In the end if you're not experienced in air layering (and the location of that air layer would be difficult to manage) you will delay your self a year, kill off the top of the tree, or both--which would basically lead to the drastic reduction in the trunk (that you're trying to get around) to compensate for the lost top.

There is a time to air layer. This isn't one of them. Air layering usually isn't worth the trouble.

 

[QuantumSparky]

Getting two trees is NOT a really good reason to air layer anything. IF you're successful, (And isn't as easy as people who haven't done it think), you wind up with two of the same problem--this trunk is long straight and boring. Two of the same long straight boring trunks would require the same reductions to make them useable and induce movement into them to make them believable as bonsai.

Unless you air layer the more interesting section near the top as Mr. Lane suggested, the process isn't worth the time and can be counterproductive.

In the end if you're not experienced in air layering (and the location of that air layer would be difficult to manage) you will delay your self a year, kill off the top of the tree, or both--which would basically lead to the drastic reduction in the trunk (that you're trying to get around) to compensate for the lost top.

There is a time to air layer. This isn't one of them. Air layering usually isn't worth the trouble.

I was assuming the Airlayer option would be done near the top of the tree so that you can eventually cut back to a low shoot and turn that into the leader, and then grow/chop cycle until you have enough movement. Boring trunk problem solved.

Then tree #2, the stump, would be cut back low and when it back buds, do the same process as before. Choose new leader, grow it out, get your taper, cut back again, rinse and repeat. Other problem fixed

 

[Shogun610]

All responses by Bobby ,RockM , Shibui and Forsooth id take into consideration all their talking point and read them carefully . Also I’ve been in your shoes, finding quality pre bonsai material that has potential on EBay is very difficult. There are 5 sellers out of the many that I know have good material for a good price. This sellers materials are way overpriced IMO, Ive seen this sellers stuff so be weary in the future and I wouldn’t buy from this seller again. Go to a bonsai nursery/studio, fbook auctions can be a thing but again it’s up to you as your eye improves to discern good material or not. Lastly, plant nurseries, I’m fortunate to have a very high quality native plant nursery near by , so hope you’ll have the same luck in all those avenues I mentioned.

 

[Maiden69]

most will come to the forum and expect everyone to work and style their tree for them

I have only been doing bonsai 1 year and I do as much research I can. I agree with asking for feedback most of the time, but what Bobby mentions here is something that I have noticed a lot since I joined the Mirai Live website. There are members that month after month ask Ryan on the Forum Q&A what to do with their trees... and most of the time, the trees won't even qualify as "pre-bonsai". One month they will ask for feedback, the next they will do what Ryan said, so they ask what to do next. I don't think anyone will learn anything this way.

I don't see what's so difficult about air-layering that it shouldn't be done by a beginner. I did my first air-layer the first month doing this (July 2020) on a torulosa juniper and separated it in November 2020. Tree is doing great today. I have 3 trees that will get air-layered next year.

Here is one of the first posts I read from Jonas that was not JBP related, I was reading his series of Japanese bonsai nursery visits and this one called to me. Especially where he states that "Onuma wastes nothing as even the sacrifice branches become new trees."

Onuma's mini-bonsai growing techniques - Bonsai Tonight

Growing techniques from Kazuo Onuma for developing chojubai, shimpaku juniper, and Japanese maple.

bonsaitonight.com

 

[Alcaviator]

Thank you for all the replies. I just received it today and looking at all the ideas and points given here. Here’s a picture of it. And yes my daughter took part and already decorated it