Sugar maple collected and chopped

[Conrad]

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I have a wild area that is overgrown with sugar maples. I was cleaning them out and collected some to hopefully be future bonsai. I cut them off with about 3 ft. Is this too much? Think they will be ok for bonsai someday? Will the trunks thicken at all or should I try and get trees with a thicker trunk. I am going to get some more trees as there is alot of A.Elms and Red oaks.

 

[MACH5]

Conrad yes the trunk will of course thicken if you let the tree grow for several years specially in open ground. The main issue with these trees is that the leaves are normally huge and the internodes very long. It is very difficult to train sugar maples into a convincing image of a tree in miniature.

In my opinion the only way these maples could make for good bonsai is if you could find a very old stump with amazing character. I think then one could make a very interesting bonsai out of such material.

I would highly recommend looking into other species of maples (ie. Japanese maples, tridents etc) that are much more suitable for bonsai.

 

[GrimLore]

If you want to try Sugar maples by all means do it! As stated by MACH5 go for a larger trunk and consider a learning experience. If I had the space here I would try to pull one with a 5 to 6 inch base and chop it to 4 foot. It "could" turn out ok if kept large and present you with some great experience. Tridents and J Maples will benefit from what you learn on that.

Grimmy