Leafless Red Maple
This is the same tree as was featured in the previous post. I took that picture in leaf, then took a trip, and when I came back it was completely bare. Here’s a winter silhouette, and, since several commented on it, a close-up of the nebari.
Red Maple, Acer rubrum, October 2011. The upward and outward flowing branches create its natural feeling.
Nebari
Michael Hagedorn 
7 Comments
Stunning!
Your blog has gotten me really interested in plants native to the U.S.-both for Bonsai and accent/companion. It’s really cool to see one of our native maples so far in development and I appreciate you sharing! Just like the Japanese use trees native to their location, I think we will see a lot more and better quality U.S. natives in the future. Certain U.S. native collected Junipers and Pines are already popular, but I feel there are still several tree and companion plant species with great potential that we have not yet used or seen taken far in development. Thanks!
Yes, the natives are wonderful and many people have been working with them for years. Vine maple is one I’m intrigued with here in the northwest, if I can ever figure out how to accurately photograph the thin-trunked, sinuous line drawings that they do so well. then i will share them too…
Ohio Michael
I realize this an older post but am still trying to solve my problem. You seem to be the authority on vine maples and this is my problem. My leaves on my vine maples ( bonsai) not landscape trees have a tendency to turn brown and turn ugly by end of July. At this time I defoliate and a second flush of leaves often does not happen and they sit till spring and the same thing happens again. Should I defoliate before the leaves turn ugly ,maybe in June or is there something I should be spraying with or some other treatment I should be doing to stop this. I live in similar climate as coastal Oregon on vancouver island. Can someone help me. Such a beautiful tree in April
Help
Qualicum Brian
Vine maple is a beautiful tree. I used to keep mine in sun and I had the same problems you describe. Mostly it is an understory plant that really seems to want to remain there, even in the ground. In a pot it is even more important. I keep mine in a fairly heavy shade, at least heavy for bonsai, and they are the tree I shade the most. But only when I’ve got long weeks of sun. In the spring and fall I give them full sun until the temperatures are consistently above 75 F. Hope that helps!
Keep them really well watered, too, and make sure you’ve a good, solid root mass with a lot of feeder roots or you’ll get even worse burning.
That is one good looking tree! Even without leaves!
Time to go work some moss around the roots of my (admittedly much younger) tree 🙂
[…] nifty nebari (here’s the original Bark post). This time without its leaves. It’s from Michael Hagedorn’s website (Michael was once a Shinji Suzuki apprentice and is the author of Post-Dated – The Schooling […]