Japanese Maple seeds

[Sean Walker]

I know it’s a gamble but I’d love to try to grow some seeds from a beautiful summer red/scarlet and magnificent fall red tree along with any unique and or oddly small leafed JM.
Thank you

 

[BonsaiDTLA]

Sheffields

 

[Mikecheck123]

I know it’s a gamble but I’d love to try to grow some seeds from a beautiful summer red/scarlet and magnificent fall red tree along with any unique and or oddly small leafed JM.
Thank you

Japanese maple cultivars cannot be propagated by seed. So any traits in the parent aren't expected to be present in the seeds. It's a notoriously unstable species. So much so that every seed is considered a different cultivar than its parent.

So if you see a trait you like (like redness), buy the actual cultivar.

This is also the reason that 99.9% of commercially available cultivars are grafted. Because that's the most efficient method of propagation when seeds are off the table.

 

[leatherback]

Japanese maple cultivars cannot be propagated by seed. So any traits in the parent aren't expected to be present in the seeds. It's a notoriously unstable species. So much so that every seed is considered a different cultivar than its parent.

Slightly disagree

I agree; Cultivars cannot be grown from seed, as growing from seed recombines the genetic makeup of the parents and traits will be different in the offspring.

The difference in the next generation is often however so small that it is not noticable to the lay person. 10 generations down the line it is obvious. This is the reason why the deshojo you get in Europe which were nog imported from Japan, are often much weaker in brilliance than the ones from Japan: People habe been propagating from seed and been selling them as the true thing.

If the changes are massive, say because you crossed a laceleaf with an arakawa, you might still get cool plants, and in the batch you will find individuals that are close enough to the cultivar not to matter.

I personally recommend sowing all the seed you can get. Keep the best ones. Give or trade the rest away. Is is after all how cultivars come (came?) to be in many cases. Sorting through thousands till you have one with specific traits and/or crossing cultivars to become a new interesting one.

 

[Mikecheck123]

you crossed a laceleaf with an arakawa

Lemme know when you do this.....

I speak in absolutes so that someone will correct me via Cunningham's Law.

 

[eryk2kartman]

Just do them for fun, you never know how nice they going to be or not
dont need to buy seeds, i did buy before and also collected some from local JM around end of November, they both germinated, i dont see much difference in the growth.
So yeaaa, have fun with seeds

 

[leatherback]

you

already done this.
Seeds collected from the arakawa mother showing lacey leaves. But first year. Too early to tell what the result will be. Unlikely that it works first time but who knows.

 

[leatherback]

i did buy before and also collected some from local JM around end of November, they both germinated, i dont see much difference in the growth.

Nothing different from seed from traders.

 

[Sean Walker]

I understand the probability of traits and have bought a few seed from a store this year
I am only growing for me so I wanted my gambles to be more personal?
And if I luck into a specific trait of a members tree that would be Super! And if not well then it looks like my friends and family are getting some acers for their birthdays and Christmas

If anyone has some I they would let me try PM me

 

[Bonsai Noodles]

already done this.
Seeds collected from the arakawa mother showing lacey leaves. But first year. Too early to tell what the result will be. Unlikely that it works first time but who knows.

Interesting! How do you go about crossing these cultivars? I usually only see cutting/grafting guides for propagation — nothing specific to actual breeding like this.

 

[penumbra]

I personally recommend sowing all the seed you can get. Keep the best ones. Give or trade the rest away. Is is after all how cultivars come (came?) to be in many cases. Sorting through thousands till you have one with specific traits and/or crossing cultivars to become a new interesting one.

Absolutely! I sowed over 500 seeds from a dozen different cultivars in a seedbed this fall that was designed specifically for my maples. I have seen random seedling variations in wild collected seedlings and I am very excited about watches these seedlings develop over the next few years. The beauty of it is that with very few exceptions, I have never met a Japanese maple I didn't like. The larger bed in the picture is all my maples.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Absolutely! I sowed over 500 seeds from a dozen different cultivars in a seedbed this fall that was designed specifically for my maples. I have seen random seedling variations in wild collected seedlings and I am very excited about watches these seedlings develop over the next few years. The beauty of it is that with very few exceptions, I have never met a Japanese maple I didn't like. The larger bed in the picture is all my maples.

Love the grow beds!

 

[penumbra]

Love the grow beds!

Thank you. They were not that hard to build and I am really pleased. I described them more fully in another post.

 

[leatherback]

Interesting! How do you go about crossing these cultivars? I usually only see cutting/grafting guides for propagation — nothing specific to actual breeding like this.

In this case it is a matter of a friend with some hundred maples, all sorts of cultivars that cross fertilize. Then keep track of the motherplant and sowing. Upon germination you check the leaves that come out. I got a few with lacy leaves

 

[AlainK]

a friend with some hundred maples, all sorts of cultivars that cross fertilize

Hybridized or not, I've found that lace-leaf maples, especially red ones, produce a lot of different seedlings, some laciniated with some variation in colour and in shape, others closer to the plain species.

 

[leatherback]

Hybridized

It was, as the seeds came from the arakawa..

 

[AlainK]

It was, as the seeds came from the arakawa..

I was speaking in general

Palmatum can even be cross-pollinated by shirasawanum.

These are 1 to 3 year-old seedlings. I lost track of the parents, I collected them during walks in parks, some of them are interesting. But you have to wait, a couple of years to be sure they have a particular character.



This is one I keep as a mother-plant to make cuttingsd and air-layer. It's from seeds taken on a lace-leaf palmatum next to a big plain species and other maples. It has leaves that look a bit leathery when young and have slighly twisted lobes, which I was told is frequent on seedlings from lace-leaf. April-October 2020 :



A photo from May 2013, which shows better the difference between young and older leaves :



GO MAPLES !!!

 

[Sean Walker]

I’m not even out of the gate yet with growing these and I see I need to step it up !!
I’m open to Coral Barks yellow or reds, Summer Gold or just about any !!!
Also I’m not looking for a handout $$

 

[AlainK]

Also I’m not looking for a handout

I'd love to strip you from a few bucks, unfortunately, I can't send you anything from Europe .

I've just sent some various maples seeds to Poland (for 1€40 only !) and I also exchanged seeds and seedlings in in France and with other European countries but I can't send or get seeds from the Americas. I understand it very well though, for sanitary reasons. It's like wearing a mask in supermarkets during a pandemic : you resent it, but you know that's one of the simplest, reasonable thing to do not to infect others.

Considering the number of members here, I'm sure you'll get dozens of seeds. But once again, it's very unlikely you'll get seedlings faithful to the mother-plant. To get maples true to the parent, it's either a grafted tree that you wil or will not air-layer, or a cutting or air-layer, in which case the $ is the least you can do even if it's a friendly free offer

 

[hinmo24t]

i

Lemme know when you do this.....

I speak in absolutes so that someone will correct me via Cunningham's Law.

i like that. almost like reverse psych. i might do something similar my whole life. i can ask questions or hold a convo and get information back in a strange way. instead of proposing accuracy, normalcy, or tradition, even when i might 'know' an answer or have an opinion about something. in order to increase chances of a response... i do this in real life little convos too. thanks for the intel on this type of behavior. im glad i dont use it to be manipulative either.
i got most gullable in highschool for this reason i think haha (i graduated 30/215 for class rank) but i made myself seem completely stupid or
airy when it was just the outside layer. this prob helped me in sales a bit and also figuring out how people feel about things. weird.

OP, good luck. i am going to sow (sew?) like 50 JM seeds around December this year and hoping i could get 1-5 of them to develop past a year or two.