Advice on this hawthorn

[BuddingBonsaiBrother]

This germinated under the trees at my job, let it grow for 1-2 seasons, I can’t remember but I collected it last year (I think.) might have been the previous fall. Anyways it’s young. From what I’ve read I believe one needs to stay on top of these things with the pruning. So my question right now is; if anyone is familiar with hawthorns, should I prune this now, or wait for it to harden off more then prune, or prune at a much later date all together?

 

[Shibui]

Hawthorn is a very resilient family of trees. Very hard to kill by pruning so no problem cutting almost anywhere.
When and where to cut will depend what you want to achieve.
It's still very young and quite skinny. Many of us prefer a thick trunk that looks really old instead of a thin trunk that looks like a young tree. Letting any tree grow is the fastest way to develop a fatter trunk. A bigger pot or into the garden will also speed up thickening. One of the features of Hawthorn is that we can chop a thick trunk and still expect plenty of new shoots to emerge so it does not matter if we let them grow.

Others will be more than happy to have a skinnier trunk with a few branches just so they can say they grow 'bonsai' In this case just trim longer branches repeatedly to develop appropriate shaped canopy on the trunk.

Does not really matter what time of year to prune. You may get a few extra buds open along hardened branches pruned later in the season, and therefore increased ramification but pruning any time won't stop your hawthorn growing.

 

[rockm]

This germinated under the trees at my job, let it grow for 1-2 seasons, I can’t remember but I collected it last year (I think.) might have been the previous fall. Anyways it’s young. From what I’ve read I believe one needs to stay on top of these things with the pruning. So my question right now is; if anyone is familiar with hawthorns, should I prune this now, or wait for it to harden off more then prune, or prune at a much later date all together? View attachment 593074

A more accurate question would be are you happy with the trunk at this point. Pruning and bonsai techniques slow down trunk development tremendously. That means the trunk you have now will likely be the trunk you will have 10 years from now

This is an awfully this tree to support the related felt large leaves for the species. It will look kind of odd as a mame sized bonsai. Mame and shohin sized bonsai are the most difficult to do because your working with so much less tree. I room for errors and leaf reduction has to be very agressive

Just putting in my two cents. I work with large collected trees so I’m biased