So, I had the amur at a small maple workshop this weekend to formulate a sort of plan for it, and I think we got that somewhat figured out. I'll grab some better pics, but these are all I could grab at the home where the workshop was held, so the background is ultra cluttered, and the photos aren't composed at all. Sorry about that.
Here's a quick photo of the foliage. It's not a good shot, but it's been so windy lately, that I wanted to grab at least something before all the leaves blew off. My other small maple was a beautiful red, but the leaves all blasted off in a day.
As expected, this one didn't keep the leaves on very long, either. Here's before we started doing any work.
Due to the slingshot look that has and the straight as a pole middle trunk, we turned it around to find a better front. The best one seemed to unfortunately have a root coming straight at you, but everything else made up for it. I'll probably need to get some experience with root grafting at some point to make up for the fact that there just aren't any real surface roots other than the in your face one.
We reduced one branch down to get some variance between their heights and cleaned up some of the cuts a little. This will still take some carving/grinding to clean stuff up, but that wasn't for this workshop. I still need to tweak/wire a couple other branches (excuse my lazy, sloppy wiring. lol) but I'm digging this as a front.
One thing that came up, and I'd love for some input on, is a pot. I believe this will need a repot in the spring, and I always assumed it was a very masculine tree, with the thick triple trunks and the large main trunk, so I figured it'd need a fairly deep rectangle of some sort.
At the workshop, the ones running it were telling me it needs an oval or a rounded rectangle, since it was fairly feminine. (Or something like that. I'm paraphrasing, as I forget their exact wording.) I tried to get a better understanding, but I think they thought I was just questioning their thoughts rather than just trying to understand why they thought it should be in an oval or something like that. What do all of you think? I notice Walter Pall has a couple large Amurs, and they're also in rounded pots, which all look great. Maybe it's just a matter of me needing to have it sitting in an oval or something to see it, but can anyone help me understand why feminine is the correct choice? I guess I'm just curious what is feminine about the tree, other than the sparse branching, which will of course get more dense over the years.
I'll grab some better pics later this week when I have a chance to add a couple more pieces of wire and get it in a cleaner spot to take photos.
