The Elusive Maple Flower

baron

Shohin
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What do you do with the flowers?
Does it work the same way like with Azalea's? As in flowering requires energy and we remove the flowers when they fade so they don't produce seed pods.
 

0soyoung

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What do you do with the flowers?
Does it work the same way like with Azalea's? As in flowering requires energy and we remove the flowers when they fade so they don't produce seed pods.
The energy of flowering was spent making the bud toward the end of last season. Flower buds are just metamorphosed vegetative buds. Blooming in spring is largely just inflation of cells that existed before winter.

Even if the flowers are not pollinated, maples and azaleas will make seed = stores of carbohydrate that otherwise might have been used in some way by the tree. This is why we 'dead head'. The other option, if you don't care about flowers, is to prune in early fall. This removes the branch-tip/flower buds. I habitually cut back my potted maples (some nearing 'bonsai' status) around the time of leaf drop - they never flower. I don't do this much with maples in my landscape - they flower and make samaras.
 
D

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visited Bonsai ENR this weekend. Here is a pic of Yves Letourneau's flowering maple

could not take an eye-level pic - it's sitting on a shelf up high in the greenhouse where it spent the winter

IMG_7969.jpgIMG_7966.jpg
 

0soyoung

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visited Bonsai ENR this weekend. Here is a pic of Yves Letourneau's flowering maple

could not take an eye-level pic - it's sitting on a shelf up high in the greenhouse where it spent the winter
Looks to be an acer shirasawanum. Palmatum flowers are presented below the foliage (it is the only definitive way I know to tell the two species apart).
 

ml_work

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Well Mach5 just said his started 3 years ago and now does every year. I was just about to ask could this be a X number of year thing that they have the flowers? I noticed some flowers on some JM at Brussels two weeks ago when I was there and thought it was a different species. I have some air layer of Arakawa that I have never seen flowers on in the past maybe 3 years. This weekend I was checking on them in the storage and saw they have the same flowers that I saw at Brussels and posted here. Will get some pictures tomorrow.
 
D

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@MACH5 glad to see you still have this one ?

eh @barrosinc ! you never know with this guy!
 

Shibui

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I mentioned Taiwan maple earlier as very precocious and floriferous. Photos of typical seed on a potted one (wrong time of year for flowers here but I'll try to remember next spring)
P1210212.JPG

Also on related but different topic - Chinese elm flowers?
This species is unlike most other trees and flowers in Autumn. Most people would miss these flowers but the bees know and when the trees flower. This week the trees in our garden are really humming.
P1210204.JPG
P1210209.JPG
P1210215.JPG

I have not noticed any of the bonsai elms flowering so we probably trim off any buds during summer.
 

Shinjuku

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Here are some flowers that I found yesterday on my Acer palmatum 'Mikawa Yatsubusa'. If you look carefully, you can see one flower that's fully open. It's amazing the wonderful things that you can find when you take the time to really pay attention to details.

Japanese-Maple-Flowers.jpg
 
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