Trident maple bonsai, late spring tasks 

Gee thanks so much German! That’s great to hear.

My pleasure Walt.

Thank you so much for your comments EV! Kaede for sure refers to Trident maple. Momiji refers to Japanese maple though. Both amazing material for bonsai of course. Enjoy the meditative action of cleaning your tools 😉

​@@TerryErasmusbonsaicommon names for trees are funny and confusing things! Here in Japan where I live, the "Chinese maple" is called 唐楓 (tou-kaede), which is specifically for Acer buergerianum species. I'm sure Chinese call is some else! The "tou" (pronounced like the toe of our foot) part of the kanji characters is likely a reference to the old Tang dynasty China and region the original trees may have come from. 楓 Kaede (pronounced ka-eh-deh), comes from the Japanese word kaeru, meaning frog, and te/de, meaning hand. It's easy to imagine various maple leaves looking like frog hands! This refers to all species of maples in general. Hope that helps other curious viewers! Looking forward to more videos, cheers!

Hi EV thanks for that explanation. I myself have spent a lot of time in Japan and around bonsai. I am not saying you are wrong of course but this not how I am familiar with the Japanese references to the species you have raised. No matter, we fortunately both understand what the other means.

@@TerryErasmusbonsai I think a simple Google search for "toukaede" or even "trident maple Japanese" will objectively and unequivocally show that toukaede (トウカエデ, 唐楓) is what the Japanese language refers to as trident maple, or acer buergerianum . When you call a trident maple a kaede, well, in a way you aren't wrong, since a trident maple is indeed an Acer species within the Acer genus. But then again, I can call any cultivar of acer palmatum kaede and that would be right, since they are also Acer species/subspecies/cultivars within the Acer genus. Kaede means maple (Acer genus) in Japanese :)

Thanks so much. Thanks very kind William.

Great Ed! I’m glad the video will be a bit of a help to you. Enjoy your tree.

Thats great, I hope you will be able to use it someday.

Ha ha. Yes. Opposite to us.

Thanks Herman!

Thanks Matthew. I am not going to do such a talk. I use the same media which is used internationally namely: akadama/pumice/lava based substrates. There is no reason why South African should be the exception. I am so tired of trying to convince people to change from their sand, compost, bark mixes. I now feel they should do as they please hoping they will see from my work and trees the advantages of changing their media. I have an ebook on my website on growing media and have also blogged extensively on the subject. You will find this content on my website if you care to read it. Thanks for the question or request though!

Thanks Wesley. If the customer has me work on it again I will do so. However I have a lot of other maples around and will be doing some interesting work on them in the coming months.

Very glad the information is useful to you Andreas!

Good question to which I do not have a definitive answer. It falls off anyways. Whether the nutrients in the petiole is of any meaningful amount I would not know. I seem to cut it near the leaf but I think this is more a result of ease rather than a conscious decision.

@@TerryErasmusbonsai agreed!

Thank you so much!

Thanks Garreth. I believe I answered that in the video.

Yes that sounds about right, you would need to remove the coarse wart like parts with a grafting knife or similar and allow it to heal over again. You might need to do this in late spring rather than early spring as sapflow is lower then. Some sealers, especially those with added hormones can cause this too, you may want to experiment with a different sealer.

Epoxy is fine. You can use anything which will provide a sound surface on which callous can form.

mmmm, that's a good question. It "should" work provided the tree is very healthy and you do the major cuts in late spring once the spring leaves harden off as this is when the trees energy will be at its peak. It is a risk though. Perhaps you want to thread or approach graft some branches further back where you are hoping to get buds to break, this is a more certain technique in my view - particularly as you mention that the branches are quite old.

Provided the tree was strong and healthy when you defoliated it will be fine. 4 days is a bit quick to expect to see new growth. I’d say at least 14 days and longer. I am sure your tree will be fine.

@@TerryErasmusbonsai thnx so much love the channel 👏 Would love to see more native species of trees 👏👏 Just got into bonsai i got given a book called Growing bonsai in south africa by doug hall teaching me alot of patience...

@@Jason697 that’s great. Good to read books but be aware that a lot has changed in bonsai technique in the last years so make sure what you read is still valid. I don’t work with a lot of indigenous species, unless they are a customers tree’s. However the techniques I demonstrate can broadly be applied to indigenous too.

HA HA HA HA HA, well now you know!