Japanese Maple Progression From Seed

[cheap_walmart_art]

Here is a fun one I havent shared yet. This little Japanese maple was gifted to me by a students parent back in 2017 when I first got into bonsai. I don’t have many pics as it was literally a sprouted seedling in a pot when I received it, barely out of the cotyledon phase.

Here is what I believe is my earliest pic of it in 2019.


I had just let it grow in the pot and as I fed it and kept it alive, it slowly got bigger until one spring I saw some potential and put it into a training pot. Still no pic until 2020:

I had repotted it sometime before this pic and this is the tree after a couple seasons of just letting it grow and “hedge pruning” it to some kind of manageable shape so it didn’t crowd others


Here is the first wiring and shaping done in 2020-2021


I let it go along with that basic silhouette for a couple seasons, specifically letting the tips of the branches grow and elongate past my desired silhouette, with the idea this is thickening the branches near the trunk, and thickening the trunk at the bottom (at one point it has a three or four foot leader coming straight off the top)

I repotted into a smaller pot in ‘23 as well as cutting a ton back to the main structure to get finer branching.



Finally, here we are today. My little gifted maple that could.

 

[ponderingsage]

Great progression!
Thanks for sharing.
I have a ROR maple that all of a sudden is showing progress after a few years in a grow bag. Its mice when a tree from humble beginnings starts to take shape.