AusBonsai

I've always looked at the photos of Japanese trees with massive nebari - trunks flaring out into a solid plate of fused roots and wanted to have something just remotely similar so a few years ago took up the challenge of augmenting the roots of some of my tridents by root grafting. I've tried thread grafting roots but more often than not I get the top of the seedling to graft while the root part withers away. For me, approach grafting produces more reliable results. A couple of closer views of the seedlings grafted onto roots.

Shibui ...I recently attempted a root "free graft" on a trident as a bit of experiment/training exercise..will check things out in the near future when it's not 40 degrees charlie,and blowing like a fan forced oven! :not embarrassed,just a bit warm....Dog

Do you mean just grafting a bit of root on the tree rather than an entire seedling? I haven't tried that with maples but did put some on a crabapple which refused to root as a layer about 15 years ago. Just cut wedges at the top of some roots then lifted up flaps of bark at the place I wanted roots, slid the wedges in, tied it up and buried the whole lot until it healed up. Most of them took ok.

Thats right Shibui,I cant recall exactly when it was done,but a surplus root from the same tree was used the way you describe...fingers crossed,I'll check it out a bit further down the track...Regs....Dog