Apple leaf reduction?

[GailC]

Its my understanding that apples (not crabs) do not reduce very well, anyone know roughly how small they can go?
The crab I dug is just a pole but the full sized apple has some nice movement, hate to waste it on a yard tree but don't want to waste my time on a tree that will have oversized leaves.
Before you ask, no, I have no idea what kind of tree it is. It came up in grandma's flower bed next to her old apple trees where she has red and yellow delicious, macintosh, crabs and a arkansaw black.

 

[Leo in N E Illinois]

actually, leaves of standard apples will reduce, moderately well. Reduction will naturally occur as you develop branching. the more often a branch sub-divides the smaller the average leaf. True for standard apples and true for crab apples. Standard apples have leaves that can be 3 to 4 inches on a full size tree. You can get them down to less than 2 inches easily, and possibly to less than 1 inch with well devloped trees. I would not use defoliation techniques to reduce leaf size on this young tree, that ia a technique for advanced trees in later stages of refinement. Don't worry about leaf size until after your trunk is the height and diameter you want and you have all the branches you want in place. Until then, don't let the leaf size bug you.

What does not reduce much is flower size and fruit size. Your standard apple, should you let it develop fruit, will have a normal size fruit. The fruit will be wildly out of scale, though that can be fun if you only let a single apple develop. It is a metabolic drain on the tree, only let an apple develop if the tree is very healthy. No fruit while in early development, youneed to conserve the tree's energy. Flowers and fruit are not likely on young apple trees from seed. They often don't set flowers until they are 10 or more years old.

But standard apples are occasionally used for bonsai, and they make nice bonsai. They are usually allowed to flower, but are seldom allowed to fruit.

 

[Adair M]

And, when at or near show ready, sometimes the leaves are cut. They're folded in half along the main vein, then cut at s diagonal. Maybe cutting 1/2 the surface area off. Cutting this way preserves the basic shape of the leaf.

 

[Adair M]

Here is a somewhat famous shohin Apple bonsai. It went viral on Facebook, with lots of Non/bonsai people thinking it was a fake or a photoshop picture.

When I was able to find the second picture, taken a couple weeks prior to the first pic with the apple a little less ripe, did they finally believe it to be a real Apple.

There were many, many "experts" saying how it was impossible for such a small tree to make such a large Apple! Lol!!! There is a lot of ignorance out there!!

Anyway, the viral photo:



If you look carefully, you can see how some, not all, of the leaves had been trimmed in the manner described in my previous post.

And now the picture of when it was less ripe:

 

[GailC]

Thank you for the info, I'll have to see how the full sized apples does this summer and if I even like the looks of it once it gets some foliage. I'm not sure of the age, probably not more then 4-5 years. I'll have to ask grandma if she remembers when it came up.

I wasn't planning on ever letting it set fruit. I have a small meyer's lemon tree (not bosai) that only had one lemon on it last year, it was so big it looked like a mutant. It really stressed the tree and I almost lost it.

The crab I dug is easily 10-15 years but is extremely small for it age due to broke roots when it was planted in the ground a number of years ago. It has nice reddish leaves and very, very dark blooms.