Hello, A friend of mine did some maintenance pruning on a "forest" of maple he had brought to our bonsai club meeting today. These trees are in fact a "raft", the branches grew on one side, so he put it horizontally in a pot, removed the bark to the cambium on the bottom part of the trunk and new roots formed. I remember referring to this technique in a recent post. So far, nothing much to say, except that the foliage was very unusual for a bonsai. There are many cultivars or even species that are suitable for bonsai, but it was the first time I had seen one like that. So I'll try to root some cuttings ;-) He told me that the new leaves were as bright a red as Deshojo's, and you can see on the photo that the new twigs are dark red. The summer colour is a dark green, with hints of burgundy on some leaves. These are more deeply divided than in Deshojo, and also a bit "twisted". The internodes are quite short, and I think that even if it may be the result of a good cultivation to some extent (for a bonsai, you don't want a small tree with branches that have long internodes, this goes without saying) it must be a feature of the original tree. Any hints? [EDIT] I remembered that "red" in Japanese is "beni", so I looked up the cultivars starting 'beni' in Vertrees & Gregory, and it might well be 'beni komachi'. What do you think?...
First thought of Beni Komachi but guess you've got that one.Here the market has been flooded with this cultivar on it's own roots,and I know grafting from them does space out the internodes.I had one of these and it was conjested but also vigorous as I fed it well.Wether on it's own roots and bonzai'd could do this I don't know but as you say that one is very compact...dunno.
Thanks for your input: if you say that there are lots of them available in the UK, and that they're on their own roots, then my cuttings might take. Good news ;-)
