Procuring specialty cultivars and dealing with their grafts

[zeejet]

To all the maple aficionados here, I have a few questions for you regarding specialty cultivars (e.g. shindeshojo, kiyohime, sango kaku, mikawa yatsubusa, etc.)

• Where are you procuring these? From online resources like Mr Maple? Or do you have access to local nurseries that carry specialty cultivars? I’m struggling to find the ones I’m interested in here in SoCal.
• Most of these come grafted - are most able to be groundlayered and if so, how do they do on their own roots?
  • As an aside, I am aware that Brent Walston of Evergreen Gardenworks has ungrafted JM’s. AFAIK, he is the only source in the entire US that has ungrafted trees from cuttings but his trees only come as small starters under ½” trunk caliper.

 

[caffeinated]

I have maybe a couple dozen cultivars and they mostly come from local garden centers. I usually just air layer them off their grafts, but occasionally I've had some that I can't get to produce roots or that I gave up on after a year and a half. Ryuzu comes to mind. I do find some that come with really well done grafts that I've just left on. My oldest maples are only a few years in my care, but all the trees on their own roots seem to do just fine. Maybe a little slower growing in their first year.

 

[Paradox]

A couple of years ago I got a sango kaku aka Coral Bark maple from a landscape nursery with a nice trunk that wasn't grafted. It's a fairly common landscape maple here. Most others if I find them in a landscape nursery are grafted

 

[Lorax7]

I’ve bought most of my maples locally, but also have a few that I purchased online from Maplestone Ornamentals.

Pretty much everything comes as a grafted plant. Air layering is the thing to do if the graft is noticeable. Once in a while, you run into a tree where the graft is done so well that layering isn’t needed. Even so, I typically still take at least one air layer because nursery stock is always taller than needed for bonsai, it gives you an extra tree to play with, and layering let’s you pick exactly where the first branch will be, which is particularly useful for making shohin.

The strength of cultivars on their own roots is highly variable, depending on the specific genetics of that cultivar. Some will struggle a bit in the first year or two. Katsura, sango kaku, Fireglow, shishigashira, and arakawa have all done well on their own roots for me. Orange Dream has struggled a bit on its own roots. I had an Autumn Moon layer that died. Not sure how much that was due to the cultivar vs. not getting as many roots to form on the layer as I would have liked. Where I am, the growing season is short enough that it’s a challenge to start an air layer in spring and have enough roots form before the fall to be ready to harvest the layer.

 

[pandacular]

Many serious maple growers in japan will train whole bonsai trees on branches of a tree planted in the ground for years before layering them off. Most maple bonsai hobbyists will do this with garden trees as well. A friend of mine is adapting this technique to some large potted maples that he’s growing.

 

[leatherback]

I just layer them off. And they do fine afterwards. Often it is an ease of propagation thing to graft them, or to ensure lower susceptibility to fungal diseases. But under bonsai care we have more control of the rootzone and can reduse risks that way.

 

[KiwiPlantGuy]

Hi,
I air layer my JM’s below the graft by about 1/2 inch or so. The graft becomes way less noticeable as it is almost at soil level.
I air layer this way, because after many attempts of trying on their own roots with verticillium etc. and losing loads of cultivars I have given up.
Must be really crappy material they use to graft with here in NZ!!
I am against the grain here, so just another POV re methods.
Photo from a few years ago.
Charles