Japanese Maple yard-adori: suggestions?

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deanpwr

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Hi,

I recently acquired a 15+ year old palmatum. It's currently potted up in pure attapulgite (non-clumping cat litter) in a pond/waste basket. It has beautiful wide nebari (currently submerged) from growing in shallow top soil. The taproot was growing horizontally at 2 feet depth. The spring buds have recently popped and it looks in good health.
20210411_145257.jpg
I'd love to hear some suggestions about it's future as a bonsai.

20210411_145340.jpg20210411_145311.jpg
 
One comment I would like to make is.. DId you verify this litter you are using? I have a bag of attapulgit. 24 hours in water and the stuff turned soft. I decided to not use it as substrate, and will donate the bag to a neighbour with cats.
 
leatherback said:
One comment I would like to make is.. DId you verify this litter you are using? I have a bag of attapulgit. 24 hours in water and the stuff turned soft. I decided to not use it as substrate, and will donate the bag to a neighbour with cats.
Click to expand...
Yeah I tested some in water for a few cycles, seems to hold up nicely. It crumbles when crushed between your fingers but so does akadama.
I did buy a big bag of calcium silicate before this stuff though, didn't read the label! It was great stuff but not for pH.
www.aldi.co.uk

Lightweight Cat Litter

Find Lightweight Cat Litter at ALDI.
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Looks like a Sango-Kaku. The valuable cultivar is the top of the tree. I would air-layer off the top, and then prune the trunk back to the graft scar, and see if something interesting popped off the thick (albeit generic JM) base. What I would not do is try to make a bonsai out of the current "two-trees-in-one" configuration - the graft scar will always be there and will be almost impossible to hide. One of the admired aspects of JM bonsai is smooth bark, and it is one of the reasons why a clean trunk with extreme taper is so rare and valuable.
 
This looks like a grafted 'Sango kaku'. The line drawn by "leatherback" looks OK, but I would keep it as a patio tree. With a much better soil mix anyway.

[edit] Ach ! Bonsai Nut beat me on the line... [/edit]
 
Be careful with that soil choice. For a cheep soil for jmaples I’ve used bark nuggets with the Napa auto dry. I know some people love it and hate it. I experimented with it last summer and had the most vigorous roots coming out the holes of the pot. Which had to grow six inches through fresh soil in like a month. All I can attest to is the results I got. And the cost as well as how easy it is to obtain.
 
I'm not sure it is grafted.... it looks to me more like a bad healing with another branch that grew from the cutting.

Anyways... it won't be easy to hide that if you want to keep the whole base...
Maybe trying to clean the wound and hope that something will grow from that point??

And yep... a sango kaku for sure
 
A
Juanmi said:
Oh, I missed that. Then is more subtle that I thougt.
Even with the red circle I had a hard time trying to see it 😅
Click to expand...
Ah interesting! That's something you really need to know your **** about to notice. Thought it was the other scars in question. I think I'll keep the thick base, looks good to me and everyone that will see it... I should have photographed the nebari while I had it bared and washed.
 
I wouldn’t air layer the base off. I think you should embrace the scare, work on healing it. I like Leatherback suggestion, maybe would suggest a slight angle tilt to the left.
 
If it is this hard to spot the graft, it isn't a problem (unless it bulges over time, which can occur). I wouldn't worry about air-layering it to remove the graft.

I agree with shortening the tree and cleaning up the deadwood in the scars. You could also consider thread-grafting one of those thing, wispy branches lower down. It will give you the option to make a squatter, wider tree in the future. If I were going to thread graft, I'd go right were that first bend is in the trunk. A branch on the outside of that curve would look nice in my opinion.
 
I disagree on the graft. I think we are looking at a series of mis-steps of grafting where the original scion had been out-completed by the root stock which had branched out 3 times and/or places (the 3 dead (or terminated) stumps visible on the left) and only then began to grow "normally" off to the right after these terminations were made. The pointy thing on the lower left is an artifact of the original graft/scion union. All of it will only get uglier over time.
 
Forsoothe! said:
I disagree on the graft. I think we are looking at a series of mis-steps of grafting where the original scion had been out-completed by the root stock which had branched out 3 times and/or places (the 3 dead (or terminated) stumps visible on the left) and only then began to grow "normally" off to the right after these terminations were made. The pointy thing on the lower left is an artifact of the original graft/scion union. All of it will only get uglier over time.
Click to expand...
Why would a grower use Sango kaku (possibly) as rootstock?
 
SeanS said:
Why would a grower use Sango kaku (possibly) as rootstock?
Click to expand...
I don't know that it is or is not Sango Kaku root stock. How would you account for the world's ugliest set of grafts?
 
Maybe someone messed a graft, I don't know and I don't care. But that is someone's tree, and he probably cares about it.
I don't think that it is unusable material
 
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