In fact, here are my 2 japanese maples. On the left, it's supposed to be a palmatum palmatum and on the right a palmatum kiyohime. What would you say ?
my vote is that it is a palmadum kiyohime, after comparing the two pictures; i've been root pruning palmadum seedlings off and on all day...
From my vantage point, sometimes a photo just of the leaves is not adequate enough to make a determination as to whether the Maple is what we bought it as being. I think for this Maple we may need to see a photo of the entire plant to be better know if you have a Kiyohime or not. If we see an upright growing tree instead rather than see a mounding or spreading tree then we may have some suspicions that the tree is not a Kiyohime at all. Based on leaf shape so far the leaves looks right for Kiyohime but let's have a better idea of what you have. Jim
Here is the tree. One told me thant kiyohime's trunk are white grey and this one is green so ... Thank you for your help !
Hi Andre: Do you know where this Maple originally came from? How long has this Maple been in that pot? Obviously, it is a very nice Maple and there are lots of people that are more familiar with bonsai Kiyohime than I am but from what I am seeing the leaves are too large in size considering the age of this plant. I could be wrong but the bonsai Kiyohimes that I have seen have much smaller leaves but in most cases those Maples had been in the same pots for a few years also. The leaves can scale down in size to almost thumbnail size once the Maple has been trained to fit in the shallow pot for any real length of time. It could be that I am much more used to the Japanese forms of Kiyohime rather than the European forms of this Maple but for now I cannot say with certainty your Maple is a Kiyohime based on the size of the leaves alone. The basic shape of the leaves is right however for Kiyohime and a few more Japanese Maples. The whitish cast color on the green trunk seems like a valid point also as I even checked my three forms here and the bark color of my Maples are not nearly as pronounced a green in color as yours is but that could be due to our different environmental conditions from where you are located and where I am. You may want another opinion and I suggest you get a few more opinions other than mine should the authenticity of this Maple be in question. It could be a Tamahime instead but even still I would think the leaves would be smaller in size also considering the age of the Maple. Jim
yeah, just over spring break, in canada, check out our magnolia arboretum though at www.flickr.com/photos/yesheh. we have about 160 magnolias here, and it's sort of that time of the yeah. when we get to maples, there will definitly be photos too...
Unfortunately I don't. Tamahime has red petiole. Mine are green. I will check the vertrees's book and let you know if I find some more informations on my tree. Thank you anyway ;-)
Tamahime has red petiole. Mine are green. What makes you think that Kiyohime does not have a reddish colored petiole most of the year just like Tamahime has and then both petioles will later turn green on the older growth or in growth grown in lots of shade? Tamahime and Kiyohime have the same basic size and shape of the leaves. Tamahime will have their leaves turn a little darker green starting in mid to late Spring than all of the forms of Kiyohime will. It is the growth habits that separate these two Maples more than anything. If you look around these Maple forums you will see the akame form of our Kiyohime. Notice that growth habit of a low growing, not mounding yet spreading Maple. Tamahime is more of an upright grower and will mound just like your plant shows. Based just on the growth habit your Maple is much closer to being a Tamahime in nature than any form of Kiyohime that I know of, although Murasaki kiyohime can grow the tallest of the forms of Kiyohime that I know of. Even still, the size of the leaves on our Kiyohime and Tamahime in the ground and grown in containers are smaller in size than your Maple is as a bonsai. What's wrong with that picture? You asked if your Maple was a Kiyohime and I made comment to that. Based on the leaf size alone your Maple is neither a form of Kiyohime, nor is it a or Tamahime either all things being equal. By the way, I’ve seen Maples grown in the ground and have been sold as bonsai once the roots were severely pruned to fit the plant into the shallow bonsai pot and with some selective trimming of the top growth made the plant faked enough to become saleable as a bonsai plant to the novice, prospective buyer. If you knew your Maple was not a Kiyohime then why did you start a thread asking if your Maple was a Kiyohime or not? Jim
You're right so that proves that mine is not a kiyohime either. Because when I bought it, the label shows "Acer palmatum kiyohime" but when I checked the vertree's book, I find it too different from the picture in the book. I didn't find the akame form of Kiyohime in the forum. Can you tell me more about this ? What means akame ? Thank you Andre
Hi Andre: None of this is easy to learn. The books do not tell us what to expect of these plants from the time they leaf out to the time they drop their leaves. We see a pic in a book and have to equate it with a Maple that we have or have seen and we try to made a comparison of that digital or camera photo with our plant. The problem is that even the book picture may not always correspond to our plant, yet the plant depicted in the book is the same as ours. No one talks or has written about the stages the plants go through in a growing season so we either have to rely on people that know these things or depend on others that have grown them to help us. I understand and have made comment more than once in this forum about Maples that have a named tag for selling purposes that is not the correct name of the Maple at all. I wish it were not true but it has become more rampant now than when I was buying Maples to grow on that today the name on the label to me has no meaning. We have to know what the Maple is before we buy it or we will have to figure out what the Maple is later or have help in doing it as chances are the labels are going to be wrong more often now than they were 10 - 20 years ago. I've seen online several attempts to fool people into believing a particular plant is a bonsai specimen when to me it is not a bonsai plant yet. I bought two Maples last year that were pre-bonsai in that they were grown in five gallon containers, had their roots pruned, their tops thinned and then were placed in bonsai pots for less than a month to be sold as genuine bonsai to me. I have no desire for bonsai as I do not know who to trust. Actually I do know but I am not about to pay $450 for a Maple that I can buy the same conventionally grown plant for $149 for, so I told the seller if he wants to sell me those two Maples he had better take them out of the bonsai pots and place them back in five gallon containers, give me a five gallon price or he can sell the Maples to someone else. Well, they came to me but the question I always had was would he have sold those two Maples as bonsai at his nursery when he knew they were only less than a month in their new pots and never were a bonsai Maple? It does make one wonder. I do not fault you at all for wanting to know what you have but I think I have in a way addressed why I wanted to know how long this Maple has been in the bonsai pot. It could still be a Kiyohime but I cannot be sure of that until the plant gives me some indication that it is. Just because a book says that a plant has a red petiole means nothing to me. The books are adept at what they do not tell us and that is when the petioles are red and for how long. Are they red grown in full sun and are they red grown in high shade? From my experience the petiole color can change on us as the petiole on the leaf ages and the color and the sustained color of the petiole is affected by sunlight and the lack thereof. I am not sure of what you have either. I will have to see this Maple over time to help you out as I would want to know what the leaves look like in the Spring, late Spring - early Summer, Summer, early Fall and late Fall. Once I can get to know the coloring of the leaves, then we will see if the leaves shrink down or not. I may not have been around bonsai Maples much but I have been around bonsai Goyo, Akamatsu and Kuromatsu Pines whereby the needles on an Adcock's Dwarf or a Gyoku sho hime can become so small in length that they are only less than ½ inch long. I've seen Toichi Domoto's Cork Bark Kuromatsu have their needles that same basic length or just a tad longer also when the needles otherwise on those Pines grown in the ground would be roughly 2 ½- 3 inches or more in length. Don Kleim had a Kuromatsu Arakawa sho planted in a concrete horse water trough for over 40 years and those needles were no longer than ½ inch long. I do not want to assume your Mable is not a bonsai but I have to as it may not have been in the pot nearly as long as it may seem. Then again, it may have been in smaller pots prior to this one but is not a Kiyohime but another Japanese Maple instead. We are trying to make sense of a situation that a comment was spoken to me yesterday when I tried to explain why I wrote what I did to you and that to her "somewhere there is a rat in Denmark". Well put!. Here are links to some Japanese forms of Kiyohime. http://ganshuku.cool.ne.jp/23_2kiyohime.html http://ganshuku.cool.ne.jp/23_2kiyohimeakame.html http://ganshuku.cool.ne.jp/23_2koikiyohime.html http://ganshuku.cool.ne.jp/23_3murasakikiyohime.html Jim
Hi Jim, Thank you for your long answer and the great links (too bad I can't read japanese) I will post pictures regularly this year and I think we'll find out the correct species name by the end of this year. Andre
Hi Andre, I have a Tamahime and the petioles come out reddish pink and fade to a light, bright green or will stay reddish if given enough sun exposure. I've learned photos can be deceiving as far as color goes, both in the books and online. This is due to the photo-chemical/digital process, paper material (glossy paper makes colors more saturated), lighting, color balance, etc. Based on what I see from your photos your tree doesn't remind me of Tamahime, but it could very well be. My Tamahime will leaf out a very bright yellow green edged in pinkish red (with reddish petioles). Looking at your photos it seems your leaves have a more brick red edge that a pinkish red. The photo of the leaves you've provided really don't tell me any thing other than the two leaves are different. For all intents and purposes they both could have come from Acer palmatum seedlings. Another Tamahime I am able to observe at a nursery where I work on the weekends gets more sun than mine. Every thing is the same but the leaves take on a *rougher* look and aren't as dark green as mine and the petioles remain red or stay red longer. About bonsai: I'm glad you're taking up the hobby, but like Jim related, don't think for a moment that some nurseries aren't motivated by greed, even if it's only a few hundred dollars, when it comes to selling *bonsai*. Bonsai are created by you, not bought at some nursery. Haruo Kaneshiro's and John Naka's bonsai in the National Aboretum in Washington, DC weren't bought at some nursery! Simply pruning a tree and sticking it in a fancy clay pot is not bonsai. My father has been studying bonsai all my life (40yrs +), all that time under the teachings of the late sensei Kaneshiro. When I was a boy I remember my father's friend trying to convince him that they could make a lot of money selling bonsai. My father would train the trees and his friend would sell them for hundreds of dollars in a store. My father adamantly refused. That effectively ended their relationship. Back then I didn't understand, but I do now. Some people who are novices or ignorant about bonsai buy a bonsai tree thinking they're buying a painting. What happens to a painting after it's bought? Nothing. What happens to a bonsai after it's bought? It grows....new leaves, new branches, new roots. If the person who bought the bonsai doesn't know how to properly care for it it won't be bonsai much longer! Like Jim I have seen people take a $30 tree in a 1 or 2 gallon pot, trim it up a bit, *maybe* wrap some wire around the branches, stick it in a cheap bonsai pot, call it "bonsai" and sell it for $100 or more. Ludicrous. I digress as I'm getting off topic. In any case you have a very nice tree there (Kiyohime or not) and it has excellent potential to be a really nice bonsai. When I have a chance I'll post some pics of my Tamahime's newly sprouted leaves and leaves that have faded to green for you to compare with. Regards, Layne
Hi Layne, Thank you for the information but I know about the greed of some shops which seems to be the same in USA and in France. But I only pay 45 USD for this tree including the pot and even if it's not the best tree ever, I think that could be a nice bonsaï in ten years. You're right but I'm trying to improve my knowledge of bonsaï every day specially by writing articles for a bonsai online encyclopedia (in French sorry !) http://www.parlonsbonsai.com/encyclopedie/index.php/Accueil Thank you very much for your help. I'll be happy to see your pictures. Andre
I think the term pre-bonsai works best in this case. Bonsai refers to hands on training over time or the ability to force a change in the behavior of the plant such as the scaling down the size of the leaves or needles or to make the plant grow in ways that it would not ordinarily do. The true bonsai enthusiasts do indeed think of their plants as being self created or physically induced art forms. A living "painting" to many in reference to Layne's post. The price you paid for your tree was by no measure an attempt to fool or gouge like some plants I've seen online, at some nurseries and elsewhere. I've seen the same size Maple you bought sell for 10 times what you paid to the unsuspecting buyers in the past. Now, the rest is up to you as you have a nice Maple to continue on whether you leave it alone or do whatever you please with making changes in the growth or the shape of your Maple. For a pre-bonsai, starter Maple you did very well. Now, we wait and see what Maple you have and it can take up to 2 years before we will have a better sense of the name of it if this Maple has a name. Jim
Hi Andre, Here are some pics of my Tamahime. The first pics shows the new leaves and their edge coloring. The pics is a bit underexposed and so the leaves don't look as bright yellow green as they normally would, however the pink-red edging is pretty much accurate. It's not as dark as the leaf in your pic. The second pic shows various leaves in different shades as they fade from the first opening colors to the medium green the tree is known for. Notice how the new leaves at the tip of the branch still have pinkish petioles whereas the older leaves have bright yellow green petioles. The third pic shows the cute, tiny Tamahime leaves in relation to the leaves of an Umegae I have that has just started leafing out about two weeks ago. Layne
Unfortunately that tree was sick. When I pruned the roots I have seen a little black spot at the cambium level and one month later here's what I have. What is the name of this disease ?
