We've just purchased an Acer Palmatum "Bloodgood" from Costco. Does this type of tree need to be shaped, or does it just naturally grow to the beautiful graceful shape that we see in the Vancouver landscape? It seems to have a decent shape to it, though it was severely rootbound and had to be repotted to a much larger container.
great question but without a photo it is hard to tell completely. For a tree to have great shape, it needs to start out with great shape, hence it need to be cared for as it was grown up. Not to be mean but most of the trees in the box stores are just trees that were just grown with little pruning so that they could be sold cheap. Remember, time is money and the more time some takes to grow the tree the more money they need to get when they sell it to stay in business. Most of the trees in parks have been cared for 'pruned' by people with knowledge. Some of those people can spend hours pruning on the trees and yet only take a handful of cuttings to the recycle bin. There is a lot of thought and knowledge in growing a beautiful maple tree. Japanese maple trees can grow naturally to a nice tree but to get a tree with the beauty you see in the park, you need to start with a very good tree and then prune it with knowledge.
The latest that I read in an article for Certified Arborists, was that newly planted trees establish better without any pruning for a couple of years. But I would make an exception for defects. That part is hard to explain here. But if there was a twig twisted around another, the size of a pencil diameter, that's something which could probably come out now. If nothing is abnormal, plant it and let it grow for a season or two.
I find this interesting since I spoke with one of the more respected growers of japanese maples down in centeral Oregon and they prune all of their trees after the first season so as to build a stronger base. The other question I have about this comment is in regards to the fact that they are taking about one tree grown freely from the very beginning or a group of trees grown for mass production. This would have a huge impact on the tres shape. I get trees from many different growers and I have to say the trees which have not been professionally shape do not atract near the attention as do trees which have been well cared for. Add to this, I started in these trees by digging out a japanese garden which was being destroyed for a housing development. The people who had owned planted hundreds of japanese maples which they grafted. These trees where never pruned. You would have been amazed at how they turned out. Some where pretty cool trees but others were very akward looking.
As an interested newcomer--when I pay alot for a tree grown by a nursery that says they take care in developing and pruning their Jpm, is there any way to tell I'm getting what i paid for? Should I expect pruned without a need for obvious pruning, like very twiggy, inward growing twigs, etc. for the first season? If there are co-dominant trunks, should the nursery have chosen one as the main one? I'm thinking of the somewhat older trees, that often sell for $100 or more? A different question: I just read in the 2006 cornus satomi forum about rootstock overcoming scion, and the example given was of a beni shichihenge maple that had good variagation for 7-12 years, and then lost it, not to suckering, but through the rootstock just taking over the whole trees' expressed characteristics. i never heard this before, and I just got a nice 4' tall beni shichihenge...LOL Debviolet
I am not sure how many nurseries you buy from prune their japanese maple trees, most of that is done at the wholesale nursery (grower). As for growth on the inside, that is common with most japanese maples. If you do not want the crossing branches then it is best to remove them early so as to free up the space for the other branches to fill in any hole, Some trees are tend to have very akward growing habits with downward and accross branches, shin deshojo is one which I find with this issue. Now if you want a dense shrub tree you leave all of the branches. Some trees like As 'Sensu' has great branch structure but its folage looks better in a dense form. As for price, well $100 does not buy much of a japanese maple tree. For that you can get a quality small 3 to 6 gallon or a ok bigger tree. Remember the growers know what they have, they do not sell their prime trees for low prices. At $200 you shall start to see japanese maple trees which have had more care and should give you a tree which is pretty much established as to its mature look. (please note; this depends on your retail nursery's pricing) Most of the people who leave my place spend about $300 for a tree. Based on the cost of getting trees from a wholeseller and making a dollar or two. this is around price one needs to look at to get a nice tree which should have all of its main structure already established. Going high in price you may find you are still getting a better deal than the tree for $100. This is due to the fact that if you every added up all of the cost of raising the tree to these sizes and what you sell them, you surely would not sign up for that job. Japanese maples are a relatively slow tree and in each season there are really only a small number of of really good trees which are available to the population. Unless you are just after the most amount of trees, it is really important to only buy the best. Some nurseries do not even sell them. As for single trunk compared to multi trunks, that is now a big topic with the growers. To the most part, single trunk japanese maple trees have been staked up to get that trunk. Now many of the growers are looking at it differently and are offering trees with a more multi branch or multi trunk structure. This gives the tree a much more natural look compared to the look of a staked tree. It gives you a nicer looking tree but tends to give you a shorter tree at the retail store. This then leads people to the question of best deal. Look at it this way, someone calls a nursery and ask how much is your 6' acer palmatum 'so and so'. That tree might have a price difference from $100 to $600 based on how it was grown. So is the 6' tall tree for $100 a better deal Everyone has their own correct answer.
Pruning is surely a matter of personal preference For myself, I only prune out branches which in some way 'upset' me (meaning something that looks out of place, or wrong etc) I would also be inclined to prune out lower branches year by year to form a 'tree shape' And if you take this to its logical conclusion, it agrees totally with everything that has been said in all of the above posts :)
Would certainly agree - very much a matter of taste. One suggestion may be to wait until the tree loses its leaves in fall. For me, it is much easier to see the internal structure of the tree and make decisions from there. For most varieties there should be pictures available online (see the picture gallery here) of both the "natural" and "pruned" look for that particular cultivar. As a huge generalization, I tend to prune my mounding dissectums more. To me they look more elegant and "aged" if some of the internal brush is removed to show structure. I tend to leave my uprights mostly alone with one exception. I don't care whether single or multi trunked, but I do tend to remove some of the growth from the base to give it more of a "tree" look rather than a "bush". My only pet peeve is the tree that forms a huge "V". I never know what to do with those. That form irks me so much that I have made huge early cuts (essentially removing half the tree) with sort of a sink or swim attitude. One other consideration for those who live in deer infested areas. I tend to leave trees further away from the house (and more frequented my the deer) unpruned as that single bare trunk is a very attractive target for browsing. The bush form fares better.
I would agree that pruning has its time and place. I use the term. "haircut" when it comes to a lot of my pruning. This is pruning of new growth, This pruning helps keep trees from growing into other and creates a little taller tree since it takes some of the droop out of the branches. With over 800 trees on a 1/2 acre, I need to keep the trees confined into small space compared to their size so I am busy with haircuts. By maintaining this process I tend to make very few cut on branches over an 1/8" in diameter. When I get new trees, it is a whole different story. Some of these trees may require a larger cut or even the removal of a branch. I will look at a tree for a few days before i do any major work. The worst cuts are when you cut a large branch and leave only twig branches but since many growers use high growth food these kinds of cuts may be needed to get a tree back in balance. This might be also a good way to try and get leaves back on a branch which has grown to a whip. This is a pretty sever prune job and most like you will not have to do this if you pick out the right tree. One other thought I have when pruning is to remove duplicating branching. many japanese maple trees tend to have branches growing on top of each other like a "y". For me I have found the trees color looks more vivid if I remove one of the branches of the "y" which allows more light through the tree. Now some trees do not need this kind of pruning, such as Orange Dream. Now for some japanese maples I have found a hedge pruning style to work. In the larger bun style "himes" this pruning tends to work pretty well. I have some of these trees which are 20' around with no more room to grow so cutting mutliply branches at one time is done so it does not take me a week to prune one tree. After the first quick prune around these trees i go back and clean up and visible branches which show the pruning. These trees really need pruning in the large form due to the fact that they can suffer damage easily from snow. Pruning is an art and a function. It is good to ready a little about both factors. Bonsai books are very good references for pruning but not necessarily good since they are based on looking at a tree in a pot and not a tree in a landscaping. The most important part about pruning is to use sharp tools. With hand pruners, you need to spend the extra money to get the right pruners. Lopers are not low on the list to be used on japanese maples, small saws tend to be more recommended. The most important thing about all of this is "have fun". To the most part japanese maple trees are pretty forgiving when it comes making a bad pruning cut.
... and don't forget ... once you have cut it off you can't stick it back on again if you think you have made a mistake :)
Maybe the higher price and opinion of someone who is an expert with trees complimenting the nursery. Better trees do take more work, and that should mean more money. It would probably be the smaller percentage of nurseries. Less than 30%. Just as most nurseries do not screen trunks at the west end of the row from sun, I would not expect the average nursery to invest much time in pruning. Almost either way if fine by me, too, now that you mention crossing. Japanese maples are one of the more common plants (weeping) to self-graft (inosculate / inosculation) twigs and branches. And often, it seems more interesting. It would be fair to say that quite a few nice looking Japanese maples I've pruned, were ones that were ignored or neglected for 10 or 20 years so that limbs twisted, crossed, fused. But we never know what we will get with total neglect. Sometimes some limb wraps around in there and does not look all that dandy once the canopy is thinned. And if you want it opened and layered to see some twig-action yearly, routine pruning is almost essential. I have finally adapted to also liking the full coat of leaves draped to the ground too. Below is a 14 foot tall Japanese maple I pruned this winter. Probably the tallest weeping JM that I have encountered. It had some criss-cross low down from maybe 80 years ago too.
Without a doubt some of the old neglected dissectums make some of the most interesting trees but as you sss from M.D Vaden's photo only a small fraction of the twiggy branches remain to allow to see within the tree and there are a lot of hours of time thinking and pruning to get a tree to looking this nice. In in Seattle at the Kubota Garden there are quite a few monumental weepers which would look fabulious if they where pruned in this manor but they are in city park and do not get this treatment. They are left in a much more dense form to keep the kids from climbing in them. Even without the major pruning they still look fabulious. I still think of the guy on youtube who prunes his maples into little meatballs, at first I thought it was wrong but when i looked again at his garden I felt he was doing the right thing for his garden. Just as one of the other guys on there who says to only prune japanese maples when there is damage. They both had two different looking gardens so each person concept was correct. As for buying high quality maples, that is not easy to do. For me, I buy wholesale and some of the prices I pay for trees are equal to retail or even higher. The reasoning is that no one will take the lesser quality trees when standing in a group of high quality trees. It is different at most retail stores since there might be one good looking tree and 20 marginal trees and 10 ugly trees so you pick the best out of the 20 marginal trees and leave the one good tree standing there since it was too much money. The trees in my yard are larger so what one can really notice with the trees from different nurseries is the coloration variatiuons of the leaves and trunks of the trees. The really vivid trees like Shin deshojo or Orange Dream can look pretty darn good from So So Nursery but when standing next to a similar tree from Top Dog Nursery you might think the tree from So So was a different kind of cultivar. Now this might be important to some of us but some might feel the lesser quality/ lesser price tree is good enough for them. In my case i have to give away the lower quality trees i bought a few years ago since they are starting to rot in the pot and i do not want to waste time and money on repotting them since they will just sit there for more years.
Thank you, Amazingmaples, Whis4ey, Paxi, and M.D. Vaden! I appreciate very much your experienced and professional perspectives. I live in western Massachusetts, and nurseries here are just starting, in the last year, to offer more than Bloodgood. I have not been able to find anyone out here with experience like yours (I've asked local garden designers, the bonsai shop 3 hours from here that I found through the one japanese conifer nursery 4 hours from here...) I'm happy to find that I am not alone in my dislike of the V structure--thank you, Paxi :-) Receiving 4 different cultivars where the single trunk split into a V, from 2 mailorders in the Northwest, well, that is what provoked me to ask the forum about what a good baby tree might look like....as per above, there is not a Jpm community here for word-of-mouth recommendations of Jpm nurseries.
