I was reading the book, Niwaki, which mentioned that in some Japanese gardens they remove leaves in very early summer or with summer transplanted trees to reduce transpiration. This supposedly produces better fall foliage, more brilliant colors. I have a few trees that have burnt tips that I would like to try this on but I have a few questions. 1.) Do I remove the petiole with the leaf? 2.) Would this be performed in young trees or just the older ones? I don't want to hurt my 1st and 2nd year trees. thanks,Matt
I don't know, but it sounds risky to me and you might want to experiment this year by trying it on ONE tree that you wouldn't necessarily miss just in case something went dreadfully wrong.
I actually was reading some bonzai forums today searching for a answer and they do the same thing yet for different reasons. It is one of the last steps in bonzai to reduce internode length and leaf size. They didn't advise doing it to trees that were root pruned or previously potted the same year. I never did find out if the leaf is removed with the petiole or not though. I am thinking maybe I leave the petiole because in summer grafting, if the petiole is left on the scion, it falls off and pushed new growth on its own.
Matt, You are correct just cut the leaf off at the end of the petiole. A small pair of sissors works nicely. It is done in Bonsai for the better fall colors and smaller leaves. Plus you will get a new flush of spring growth to enjoy. Beware it should be done on healthy trees only. It is a very risky process as you are now using up dormant buds, which are there to help with stressful situations. Summer can be intense here on the east coast these days. Last summer unfortunately mother nature helped to drop several of my trees leaves. The intense heat of 20 days above 100degf and basically no rain all summer. Ths colors in the fall were alot nicer, but it was scary. Mike
Matt, I read a similar thing on a Bonsai site and tried it on a 5 gallon red dragon. Most of its leaves had about 50% scorch so I figured that I will try de-foliating it. I cut of the leaves leaving th petioles intact, the petioles dry up within a few days and drop off. I guess it is safer than pulling out the entire leaf and risk damaging the bud. This is what happened to my tree, within a month or so I had a lot of twig die back. Every small branch lost at least 6" on the end, and the tree started to look like a pompom. The die back happened in August, and after that it back budded like crazy. The tree recovered but lost the branch structure that was really nice. This may be coincidence and these factors may have affected the outcome. 1) I did the de-foliation in summer in TX with temps over 100 2) The tree was repotted that year in february 3) it was the trees first year in TX So make sure that none of these apply to the tree you want to try this on. Good luck. xman
Thanks Mike and xman, Your advice is just what I was looking for. I actually don't have any trees that are healthy enough or haven't been repotted this year. I may wait and try it in the future once they are more mature and stress free. thanks much, Matt
Hi, Mattzone, I'm from TX, as Xman. Last year I did the procees described above. Most of my planted maples (in ground) were sunscorch heavily during summer, so in september, I cut the leaves and let the petioles, after a week or so, they falled off, and new buds emerged. All of them leafed out nicely for autum color. I did it for Butterfly, Seriyu, Atropurpureum, Viridis, three sango kakus and a small dwarf red palmatum (I don't know yet which cultivar is). Also I want to pointout that all of them were planted during springtime of 2007. I didn't do this for any of my potted maples. nelran
