Grafted japanese maples and airlayers

[Paulneill]

Hi, I’ve recently been wondering about Japanese maples. We have all these wonderful different varieties of them. I just ordered 2 Corel bark maples to use as landscape trees that will be protected with my new patio. They are grafted and the fastest growing maple apparently.


Basically my question is if I airlayer branches off them what will I end up with.

I bought my dad a Corel bark maple bonsai when I was home in Ireland last year and I’m pretty sure it’s not grafted.

Will post a photo of my dad’s tree he loves it.

[Paulneill]

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fae]

Lovely tree, gorgeous colour!

[TimS]

Coral bark do make lovely trees, sold my shohin one recently and it was handling summer better than the straight species I had

[PeachSlices]

i airlayed my Arakawa and deshojo successfully and i'm doing 3 more deshojo next spring.

Simon

[shibui]

Coral bark maple is also known as Senkaki and Sango Kaku.

It is a strong and fast growing variety which is both good and bad for bonsai.
Good because it will develop a trunk quicker than some of the slower growing cultivars.
Bad because it does tend to have long internodes and coarse growth. I've battled with a couple here for around 20 years and still have very open trees with very little ramification. You can see that in the photo.

If you can be satisfied with a tree with sparse branching that's no problem.

If you are growing it for the lovely orange/red twigs you may be disappointed after some years. It's only the newest shoots that have the red colour. Because we trim regularly and remove most longer new shoots each year you'll end up with quite small new shoots so the more ramified your tree becomes, the smaller the new shoots and corresponding red bark. The older bark ends up the same grey/brown of all Japanese maples.
Also, the twigs only have good red colour in winter - which is when it is most visible but, through Summer Sango Kaku looks very much like any other JM cultivar as shown in the photo.

Sango Kaku is a stunning landscape tree, especially when it is young but gradually loses the feature that is most attractive as it becomes more mature. Plenty of much more friendly cultivars for bonsai.

Just out of interest. Seed from Sangu Kaku tend to give a good proportion of red barked seedlings. I usually get around half with new shoots in varying red colours so it is very easy to grow your own red bark JM bonsai with no graft. Just be aware that, even though they may LOOK like Sangu kaku, any seedling will have some different genes so cannot BE Sango Kaku.

Should be no problem layering Sangu Kaku if you still want to try. Good luck with making some sort of bonsai with them.

[Trimmy]

I bought a Senkaki from Bunnings a few years ago and it appears to be cutting grown, not grafted. In the first year the colour was incredibly bright. Almost hot pink. The second year was milder and more red. I have heard they are more prone to pseudomonas than other varieties, but mine has been fine so far. I have actually found it to be a bit slower growing than my other maples. Maybe they grow faster on another root stock? It also seems more prone to wind burn for me. It seems results can vary... But that's maples for you. Even the same plant can vary from one year to the next. I have struck some cuttings from it and they did alright in their first year of growth.

This is what the coral bark can look like on a bonsai: https://www.instagram.com/p/DG_fBmTTua4 ... BiNWFlZA==