Root over rocks -- trident and japanese maples

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Man, i just had a rabbit eat some maple buds. It kinda forced me to put them up on the benches a tad bit early for my liking.
Good luck with your project!
 

cwilhelm

Sapling
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Man, i just had a rabbit eat some maple buds. It kinda forced me to put them up on the benches a tad bit early for my liking.
Good luck with your project!
Yeah, I have one trident seedling in the ground that was cropped back to nothing by rabbits three times last growing season. It’s still alive, but I think it needs a year on the bench to have a fighting chance in the ground again!
 

cwilhelm

Sapling
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Here's another from the same set of trees. No baby pictures on this one, but it's been in the ground for two years. Came to me as a bit more than a pencil thick volunteer seedling MIL had in a pot from her yard. Bit of a strange rock choice, since it is basically a flat platform, but I had it on hand at the time. Root development impressed me, and after getting a look at it out of the dirt, I guided the long fibrous roots you can see along the back over the ledge.

We'll see what it looks like in another couple years. The rock is broad enough that I think the trunk is going to need a fair amount of thickening up before it can keep up. The roots too for that matter -- my wife says it looks like a spider.
 

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leatherback

The Treedeemer
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I guided the long fibrous roots you can see along the back over the ledge.
Plant is looking happy and the roots have a nice grip on the rock!

Think about what it means if you get these roots to grow over the ledge in the back though. Would you expect roots to grow there? In general, roots grow in the route of least resistance, down to the water in the ground. As such, growing up over a ledge feels unlogical to me.
 

cwilhelm

Sapling
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Plant is looking happy and the roots have a nice grip on the rock!

Think about what it means if you get these roots to grow over the ledge in the back though. Would you expect roots to grow there? In general, roots grow in the route of least resistance, down to the water in the ground. As such, growing up over a ledge feels unlogical to me.
You’re right and I misspoke. I didn’t go up and over the “guard rail” at back, but along the platform surface where it meets that back rail. You can see the fibrous mass of roots running along the back right. They go over the edge of the rock there. There’s another set of filaments on the left donning the same.
 
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