Japanese Maple pre bonsai in USA

I wanted to ask if anyone knows any place in the US that grows Jap maples specifically for bonsai. I am looking for larger material that also is not grafted. I am aware of a few places, but most of what they offer for sale is either too small or grafted and grown primarily for landscape.

Thank you in advance!

Check with Scott Chadd at Lotus Bonsai.

Also, Brent at Evergren Gardenworks (in northern California) carries seedling and cutting grown Japanese maples (no grafted trees). Most are small (4" pot), but some are larger (1 gal pot with trunks of around 1/2").

This is the link: http://www.evergreengardenworks.com

Oliver

There is a gentleman here in Springfield that raises all sorts of Maples. Our society is looking into a tour of his tree farm. To find one with thetrunk you would want would be expesive, but doable. Let e know and I will research and get his info.

Jay

Jay Gaydosh wrote:There is a gentleman here in Springfield that raises all sorts of Maples. Our society is looking into a tour of his tree farm. To find one with thetrunk you would want would be expesive, but doable. Let e know and I will research and get his info.

Jay

Thank you Jay! I realize it may get pretty expensive. Within reason I am prepare to pay I am primarily looking for a quality trunk with good nebari... aren't we all Please if you can find he's info I would very much appreciate it! Thanks!!!

Thank you to Oliver and Paul for their input as well!!! I will check these places out

If anybody else has a place, please let me know.

Here you go!

Davidsan's Japanese Maples' web site is: http://www.davidsansjapanesemaples.com/

Jay

Thanks Jay, I appreciate it!! I will check out his site and give him a call.

Jim thanks as well. I am familiar with MM

Brent @ evergreengardenworks does have larger maples as well, that do no appear in his online catalog. Send him an email with what you are looking for and he will let you know if he has anything like that.

- bob

I have a small Japanese maple nursery, almost all of my trees are grafted. However, I do have Mikawa

Yatsubusa that was grown from seedlings. I have 3 of these that might be of interest to the Bonsai enthusiast.

They are about 10" - 11" tall with several branches. Let me know if you would like to see some photos. I

also have Beni kawa seedlings that are just 1 month old! So cute (grown from my own seeds!) I sell fresh

seeds too.

Georgette wrote: I have a small Japanese maple nursery, almost all of my trees are grafted. However, I do have Mikawa

Yatsubusa that was grown from seedlings. I have 3 of these that might be of interest to the Bonsai enthusiast.

They are about 10" - 11" tall with several branches. Let me know if you would like to see some photos. I

also have Beni kawa seedlings that are just 1 month old! So cute (grown from my own seeds!) I sell fresh

seeds too.

hi,
just out of curiosity can you sell a named acer variety in the US that is grown from seed? Over here (UK) a seed grown tree can only really be an acer palmatum sp. as there is no sure way to know where the pollen has actually come from. I think there were cases of 'true' variety bloodlines being diluted bit by bit as seedlings that looked close to right got named.

thanks

Marcus

Hi Marcus~~~

My wholesaler which is large specialty nursery for Japanese Maples & other stock sold me the

Mikawa yatsubusa seedlings, so I would say that yes they can sell the seedlings as a named species.

They specify in their listing that they ARE seedlings. These seedlings are very true to parent. When

I compare the seedlings to large Mikawa Yatsubusa grafted trees which I also have, you cannot see

a difference between the two. With my new seedlings that I have grown from seed, their first true

leaf looks like the parent. It does not look like a standard acer palmatum leaf (which is longer &

skinnier). When my other seeds come out, it will be interesting to see which ones look true to parent.

Georgette

Marcus~~~

This may clear it up. On my wholesalers website www.bucholznursery.com they list the

Mikawa yatsubusa seedlings as Acer palmatum "Seedling from Mikawa yatsubusa" .

Georgette

JimLewis wrote:www.mountainmaples.com

Mountain Maples has morphed into essence of the Tree. essenceofthetree.com

Georgette wrote:Marcus~~~

This may clear it up. On my wholesalers website www.bucholznursery.com they list the

Mikawa yatsubusa seedlings as Acer palmatum "Seedling from Mikawa yatsubusa" .

Georgette

Hi Georgette,

thanks for the replies,
it seems they have worded it cleverly enough to use the seed baring parent tree in the name but long term this will effect the true variety and the purity of the tree. As you know the acer pollen in the air in spring time will be a complete mixture of every variety flowering at the time, and even pollen from other countries and other years will be in the mix carried by air currents. While the female part is on a 'named tree' the pollen has a probability of not being so, so the likleyhood is a cross breed. The problems in our nursery industry came when the seed making plant was dominant - so to the untrained eye seedlings may be 90% -95% named variety - these look like the parent so became named - but often features like intense colours, leaf size, hardiness etc have subtley changed.

1st generation trees then get sold, some get planted as stock plants and used for grafting or worse still the seeds get collected and sold as named - and the cycle starts again. I worked with an acer 'maker' who's lifes work was creating x breeds, maturing them, grafting from them and studying their year round habits before submitting a very few suitable trees to become named varieties. He looked at any seed grown tree as just understock to graft onto . linked to this the purity and pedigree of stock plants used commercially must be beyond doubt too- ideally sourcing the best of the best plants - always older trees too, as the older the tree you find the purer it would have been when started. . . we had access to one of the UK's oldest arbouretums to gather stock from which helped, as many of the trees were planted right back when the new variety was initially classiffied

Within bonsai this diluting cycle is very easy to see with deshojo - as there are so many trees that now have dull spring red growth and many blotchy leaves - I saw a row of deshojos last week that were a deep burgundy ! they were pink in spring but now look like a bloodgood with little leaves - quite nice actually but not 'deshojo'.

thanks again

Marcus

Dear Marcus~~~

"Pollen in the air" - who knew - not me! Of course, it makes perfect sense! I have bees & butterflies, a whole raft hopefully of natures helpers here! I have about 400 trees and of course those seeds will be cross pollinated. I never thought of that before! I learned from an "expert" about grafting (however my grafts didn't take!) I had always heard that with seedlings you get variety, but I felt that was to be expected. Your explanation certainly clears up the muddy waters in regards to when a particular variety does not "look" the way it should. I tell my clients to consider that when the tree was grafted that it could have come from different "mother" trees and that can seem to influence why different plants of the same sub-species can have the same leaf structure but different leaf colors in grafted trees.

I have had my Japanese maple nursery a for about 11 years now (this is my retirement job) and there is always something new to learn. I have Bonsai clients and who want pre-bonsai material, so I am thinking of producing some of the stock that they want. They love the Mikawa Japanese Black Pine and I have just received a small order of those trees that were trained Bonsai from the get-go. I have read on the posts on this website that they want seeds, seedlings and not grafted trees. So that is why I mentioned those things.

You must have seen absolutely fabulous trees when you were working with the "acer maker"! That would have been a real delight as I am sure that you had access to trees with real "age" on them!

Thank you for sharing your insights & information~~~


Georgette

The Growing Grounds in North Carolina has fields of Acer palmatums grown specifically for bonsai. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet.

Dendrogeek wrote:The Growing Grounds in North Carolina has fields of Acer palmatums grown specifically for bonsai. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet.

Marc has been discussed previously on this and other bonsai forums, it seems there have been some serious issues with Growing Grounds, that may be why.

-Jay

drgonzo wrote:...it seems there have been some serious issues with Growing Grounds, that may be why.

-Jay

Nothing in bonsai is easy....

Why would you only want Acer palmatum? These are very to grow.

Hi Marcus~~~

Here are some photos of my seedling Mikawa Yatsubusa and my larger grafted Mikawa

Yatsubusa. I would to ask your opinion on them as I do not have the training to see their

differences

Georgette

This is the seedling:





This is the grafted Mikawa yatsubusa:




Closeup of the grafted leaves:




Closeup of the seedling leaves:

Georgette,
The difference won't be in the foliage, but in the robustness of the roots. Many A. palmatum varieties simply can't survive on their own roots, and others are significantly weakened in the long term. Thus the traditional practice of grafting.

I was taught that the grafting of Japanese maples was to ensure "pure" color from the mother

tree (even tho the mother tree is a grafted tree too!). I have Mikawa yatsubusa seedlings that are

growing very well on their own roots. Of course, they are only 2 years old, so it will be interesting to

see how they do in the future.

Georgette

I have been cultivating associations with the intent of doing some air layering of established Japanese Maples that do well in this area. Find a local tree with some lower branches that need to be removed and see if the owner(s) will work with you instead of just whopping them off and burning them. Then getting the top and nebari to progress is all on you.

Georgette wrote:
I was taught that the grafting of Japanese maples was to ensure "pure" color from the mother

tree (even tho the mother tree is a grafted tree too!). I have Mikawa yatsubusa seedlings that are

growing very well on their own roots. Of course, they are only 2 years old, so it will be interesting to

see how they do in the future.

Georgette

Grafting is a technique primarily used to speed up availability for sale of specialty cultivars as grafting a scion to a rootstock is far quicker then growing out a cutting. Grafting also allows us to guarantee the foliage will be identical to the mother plant as you mentioned. Some Cultivars are indeed 'slow' or 'week' on their own roots but in many many cases cuttings or layers will, given time, begin to out grow grafted specimens of the same variety. See Bret Walstons comments on the subject for further guidance

Some seedlings may show some degree of hybrid vigor and can be very strong on their own roots. I have seen seedling Full Moon Maples grown into very large healthy bonsai as well as many Air Layers that have developed into specimen sized trees, Kashima, Shishigashira, Deshojo and many others.

Unfortunately I believe the often repeated line that this or that Japanese Maple will not perform well on its own roots has only prevented bonsai enthusiasts from trying to clone or layer suitable stock, believing the results will be doomed to be inferior and thus has further limited the discovery of which cultivars may make fine trees when grown on their own roots.

I can see subtle differences between your seedling Mikawa Yatsubusa and your grafted trees leaves and these traits do indeed manifest in foliage, often most notably in the coloring of early spring foliage which can often be very different between a seedling of a particular cultivar and the true cultivar itself...lucky for us good seedlings are often "close enough" to the parent stock that we can enjoy them for what they are, some in fact are much more interesting then either of their parents were and indeed this is oftentimes how new cultivars are discovered.

-Jay