A. palmatum "Mikawa Yatsubusa"

I finally picked up one of these puppies that I have wanted for so long - a small nursery specimen. Leaves are a beautiful bright green right now. Couple of questions regarding them however.

First, I've looked at them for years and never, ever have I seen one that was not grafted. I understand some cultivars don't do well on their own roots. Is this a case of that and is it that severe? Or do they simply not send out roots from cuttings or airlayers?

Second, this variety is often described as one of the best for bonsai, a natural bonsai, yada, yada. But I've never seen a picture of one bonsaied. Anyone?

The graft on mine is fairly high but also reasonably well done. From the front I am considering it is actually almost invisible, currently. I am a big fan of airlayering A. palmatum (or most anything) to get better rootage and I will probably do that with this tree. But given the (apparent) reliance on the understock, I will layer below the graft.

I will try to get some pics posted over the weekend.

If you airlayer just below the graft, it should be successful.

My wife just bought me one of these for our 25th anniversary. I was wondering if you did layer it and how it turned out. What method did you use to create the air layer? Thanks.

Hello. Unfortunately, some species of J. maples don't air layer very well. They are more often grafted because the industry supplies mostly trees for landscape and grafting is a quicker way to produce trees than layering and the result is a tree that is taller and can be marketed as a larger tree. There really isn't a bad Japanese maple variety for bonsai in my opinion. Some have smaller leaves, some shorter internodes, some more dense leaf growth, and some just simply interesting red leaves. I don't have this variety (yet) but have really liked Germaines gyration, plain old small leafed green maples, Shin Deshojo, Koto No ito, and Emperor One.

I haven't had particularly good luck with layering lately and this tree didn't help that trend. I layered it toward the end of last spring just below the graft using the simple ring-bark method with rooting hormone and wrapping with sphagnum in plastic. Toward August I hadn't seen any roots so I unwrapped to check progress and found a fairly prodigious callous, but no roots. I scraped the bark off the edges of the callous and applied rooting hormone again an rewrapped. By fall I saw one or two roots through the plastic. I overwintered it with the other maples in a well protected area, but it never budded out this spring. I unwrapped and found the understock to be entirely dead. It made no sense to me as it had seemed perfectly healthy all the previous growing season.

Good luck with yours

Mine has a rather obvious graft but since the wife bought it as a gift I don't want to chance killing it by the girdle method. I wonder if raising the soil level around the trunk might work.