Any idea what cultivar might this be?

[A. Gorilla]

Please consult a molecular scientist.

This thread is locked.

 

[Mailo06]

Unfortunately, a lot of hime can look like this, but at least it brings my guess closer, its either Tama Hime, murasaki kiyohime or kiyohime, and all of those dwarves are awesome.

I have a kiyohime, i would say def not one. Is there a kiyohime and murasaki? Was thinking it was the same cultivar

 

[Ming dynasty]

Hi to all, just bought a new acer, was wondering what cultivar this might be. Tiny leaves ,smaller than kiyohime, new groth look green. Also what might be the best course of action to turn it into a bonsai as it is a bit leggy

Nishiki gawa?

 

[penumbra]

murasaki kiyohime or kiyohime

I have these two and they are similar but not the same. I don't know the other one.

 

[Mikecheck123]

@Mailo06, you should know that there are some people here who think it is inappropriate and actually literally impossible to identify a cultivar under any circumstances and for any reason.

This is obviously an extreme point of view, and somewhat silly when J.D. Vertrees devoted his life to making a book about identifying cultivars.

For your own information and enjoyment, obviously it's appropriate and entirely possible. I bought a Sawa chidori this year based on a cultivar id, and do you know what I got in the mail? A Sawa chidori! Was that just pure luck? Of course not!

And to the extent that there is a rampant problem with people selling fake cultivars online, even the sternest admonitions on an internet chat board will do exactly nothing to reduce that problem.

So if you want to id this cultivar for your own information or for the purposes of buying more online, don't be dissuaded.

 

[Mailo06]

Hm, as i read the description of cultivar, it should have bark like pine. This one is regular bark, and the tree should be like 18 y old.

Nishiki gawa?

 

[Bonsai Nut]

you should know that there are some people here who think it is inappropriate and actually literally impossible to identify a cultivar under any circumstances and for any reason.

This is obviously an extreme point of view, and somewhat silly when J.D. Vertrees devoted his life to making a book about identifying cultivars.

For your own information and enjoyment, obviously it's appropriate and entirely possible. I bought a Sawa chidori this year based on a cultivar id, and do you know what I got in the mail? A Sawa chidori! Was that just pure luck? Of course not!

I seem to be creating a lot of ill will on the forums with this basic point, so I should probably just let it go. Ultimately I was trying to suggest that there is a world of difference between looking like something and being something.

What you got in the mail looks like a Sawa chidori. Great! If I bought a random Japanese maple from a bonsai nursery with unknown origin, and it looked like a Sawa chidori, good for me too! Both trees could look identical. Both could be beautiful and make amazing bonsai. However that doesn't mean that they are Sawa chidori. They might be. They might not be. Who knows? And so since no one knows, it is better to say "looks like a Sawa chidori, but I don't really know what it is."

If you plant a field of seed from a Bloodgood, you will get a lot of red Japanese maple seedlings that look very much like a Bloodgood. None of them are a Bloodgood. I could sell them all over the place without a description, and if anyone opened a book they would say "wow! looks exactly like a Bloodgood". They would be correct - it would look like a Bloodgood. But it wouldn't be one.

However I am not the king of what you call your trees Call them anything you want Lots of people do!

[EDIT] Since I had no idea what a Sawa chidori is, I went online and ordered a couple. I wonder whether they will look like a Sawa chidori? Regardless of what they look like, I will know they are Sawa chidori [/EDIT]

 

[Ninecloud]

I have a kiyohime, i would say def not one. Is there a kiyohime and murasaki? Was thinking it was the same cultivar

Yeah , they are just a bit different In color and the window that they carry them

 

[Lorax7]

@Mailo06, you should know that there are some people here who think it is inappropriate and actually literally impossible to identify a cultivar under any circumstances and for any reason.

This is obviously an extreme point of view, and somewhat silly when J.D. Vertrees devoted his life to making a book about identifying cultivars.

You position is the extreme and utterly incorrect one. Cultivars are clones. They are a specific genotype. You are wrong. If J.D. Vertrees actually made the claim that an unknown plant could be positively identified by its visual appearance alone, then he's wrong too. I doubt he truly meant that. I think you cherry picked some of his words, lacking sufficient context, and misinterpreted them. But, if he did mean that, then, sorry, but he's wrong about that one thing (which doesn't detract from the rest of the body of his work).

 

[Mikecheck123]

I doubt he truly meant that. I think you cherry picked some of his words, lacking sufficient context, and misinterpreted them.

Why are you so angry? It's weird. In any case, you're wrong. . This couldn't be any clearer.




He could have saved a lot of time by just saying that identifying cultivars is impossible.

 

[Lorax7]

Why are you so angry? It's weird. In any case, you're wrong. . This couldn't be any clearer.

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He could have saved a lot of time by just saying that identifying cultivars is impossible.

I’m not angry. I’m patiently explaining to you, once again, that you’re wrong about the feasibility of distinguishing with certainty between wild-type and a specific genotype via visual inspection alone.

 

[Mikecheck123]

I’m not angry. I’m patiently explaining to you, once again, that you’re wrong about the feasibility of distinguishing with certainty between wild-type and a specific genotype via visual inspection alone.

Good. I know that this was probably written by marketing people rather than the authors, but I wanted to share it anyway for the lolz.

This is on the inside cover of the Fourth Edition:

 

[Bonsai Nut]

He could have saved a lot of time by just saying that identifying cultivars is impossible.

I'm not going to try to explain it, other than to say what he wrote 44 years ago may not have been clear. I have never read that section to mean "use this book to take random Japanese maples and assign them to a cultivar" but rather "use this book as an identification guide to cultivars and their names and descriptions".

When you place an order for a tree online are you looking for a tree that looks like a cultivar? Or are you looking for a tree that IS a cultivar - a known clone of the source material?

I think it is much more likely than Vertrees was dealing with nursery lists of dozens of cultivars - with no clear description of their appearance or characteristics. So he sat down and began to catalog them, describing them to the best of his abilities and taking photos to try to capture the essence of what the cultivar was. It is an identification guide of Japanese Maple cultivars.... NOT of Japanese Maples.

Good. I know that this was probably written by marketing people rather than the authors, but I wanted to share it anyway for the lolz.

Yeah, I saw that. It is nonsense.

Let's say I have a few dozen Japanese maples in my landscape. Every year I collect hundreds of seeds from the ground and sow them in a field. After a few years I go out and select the 100 prettiest and most striking individuals, and I pot them up and take them to a store. Identify away! (FWIW this is how many Japanese maple bonsai nurseries select the trees they are going to develop for bonsai) Of course, the person who wrote that wouldn't know a Japanese maple if it bit them on the ass

I was reading an interesting (unrelated) study about dog ancestry and breed stereotypes, and one of the interesting parts of the study involved asking owners questions about their dog's breed heritage, and then using DNA testing to confirm their dog's actual breed. Conclusion: without a pedigree, very few owners got their dog's ancestry correct.

 

[penumbra]

It is all very clear and I don't understand the contention. Seedlings are seedlings regardless of what they look like. It is immoral and deceptive and in many cases illegal to claim anything else.
Also, since the Vertrees book was written thousands of new JM cultivars have been introduced. I doubt Vertrees himself could have waded through the plethora of named maples today.

This maple identification thing comes up all the time and I haven't yet learned to look the other way. Its a car wreck.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

It is all very clear and I don't understand the contention. Seedlings are seedlings regardless of what they look like. It is immoral and deceptive and in many cases illegal to claim anything else.
Also, since the Vertrees book was written thousands of new JM cultivars have been introduced. I doubt Vertrees himself could have waded through the plethora of named maples today.

This maple identification thing comes up all the time and I haven't yet learned to look the other way. Its a car wreck.

LOL - no, though I talk about seedlings, I think the primary issue is that people get a JM and they are pretty positive it is a cultivar... of some type. Perhaps they got it from another bonsai enthusiast who simply "forgot" which cultivar it was? Or else they get it from a nursery where it has a noticeable graft and is in an area where all the other trees are labelled cultivars... but the tag on this one fell off?

Even so, your point is a good one. I have at least two trees that have cultivar tags that are not in the book. If I took a cutting from one of those trees, and gave one to @Mikecheck123 but didn't tell him the cultivar name, he would KNOW it was a cultivar, but never be able to use the book to find it... even if it happened to look like a couple of the cultivars in the book.

Fortunately, in 1990 an international maple society was formed to manage the introduction of new cultivars. Their Japanese Maple section helps people understand how to classify new cultivars - and it helps you at least describe what your maple looks like in a more detailed fashion than "red or green". However it still won't allow you to identify a random tree as a cultivar. But let's say you have a cool tree in your nursery that you think is worthy of registering as a cultivar. You can at least dial in on cultivars that are similar, and determine whether your potential cultivar is uniquely different from the other ones.

But confusion and shady practices will still continue. I know of a nursery in SoCal who sells their own "cultivars" of trees with their nursery name and "trademark" signs all over the place... even though the cultivars are not registered. I didn't see anything special about the cultivars, but they clearly had a nursery manager with a marketing degree (and just to be clear - I am not talking about Nuccios - which DOES have cultivars with the nursery name, but their cultivars are all registered)

 

[LanceMac10]

If it is nice enough, people will start to refer to it as "X's Japanese Maple" and will want cuttings from it... even if it is not a known cultivar

So many variables can influence leaf-coloring, enough to make ID via this method pretty speculative. You can "ball-park" it with general leaf shape/size and growth habit.....pretty JM sounds good to me!

Tree in OP needs lots of TLC. Naming, not so much.