Hi, we live in Sussex, UK and in our garden we have a selection of Acers. One is a purple leaved variety - I think Palmatum - and it's quite old (at least 12 years). We had it moved in January along with another large green-leaved Acer. The rootballs were kept as best as possible but there was an element of intertwining on the outer sections. The guy that moved it scraped the bark a bit but not too deep - and he pruned some lower branches leaving it in a Bonsai shape (which wasn't what we wanted, but hey ho). Anyway, we've had a couple of cold snaps here - the worst had us at -2 to about -4 (Celsius) for a good 3-4 days - and the second brought about 24-48 hours of -1 or so. Other than that the temperatures have been bouncing between 3 Celsius overnight to about 11 Celsius in the day at best with lots of precipitation. The green leaved acer is budding - and the buds are starting to pop very slowly, when I look up close I see that beginning of a leaf bursting, still tiny but it's there. However, on the purple leaved acer, the buds are present but in many cases look a bit hardened or dead despite the twig/growth/shoots leading up to them looking purple and vibrant. I have seen at least 4 or 5 buds which look more advanced, not quite as advanced as the green one - but they look like they might burst. I think the move stressed the tree - and the cold snaps can't have helped - but does anybody have any first hand experience here and know what we can expect? Or whether there is anything we can be doing now, given the time of year, to help recover the tree as best as possible? I've uploaded a couple of pictures of the "good" buds and the "bad" ones: Thanks, James
Yourt tree will recover, no doubt about that. You can prune the twigs where some buds look/are dead. I wouldn't worry much about it, as you said the tree was stressed, but I'm 100% sure it will be fine in the end.
