As if I wasn’t busy already, I decided to add a couple more project trees to my plate. Let’s hope I don’t regret it in the future. ;o) In this post, I’m going to chronicle two Trident Maples I’m going to develop throughout my apprenticeship here at Aichi-en. The trunks have already been developed and I’m mainly focused on branch development and ramification. I hope to give some insight for those of you that have Trident Maples and not quite sure how to develop the branches and get them nice and dense like you see in the show books. As the two trees progress over the year (assuming all goes to plan…) I will update you on their progress with plenty of pictures. Since I’m talking about pictures, there is going to be about 60 pictures in this post, so I’m getting you started right and hopefully you have a bit of time to go through the whole post. I thought about dividing this post into a few parts but I always been annoyed by the words, “to be continued,” so I’m going to lay it all out right here and now. I got a nice warm cigar lit and I’m ready to get down to business. Let’s get started.
Trident Maple #1 Root Over Rock
Let’s have a look at the three other sides
Instead of having two Trident Maples that are similar such as in my last post about the two Rough Bark Japanese Maples, I decided to change it up a bit and develop one root over rock. If you’re not familiar with a root over rock tree, it’s pretty much a tree that has grown it’s roots around a rock. Simple huh?
As you can see from the pictures, the leaves have already started to push. This okay for Trident maples because they are very strong trees. If you plan on repotting a Trident maple with leaves already pushing, be a little less aggressive with the roots and all will be fine.
Getting Rid of the Bad
Though the tree looks like it has plenty of branches already, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s structurally good. We have to take into consideration branches thickness and taper when developing the branches on a deciduous tree. We can develop a dense tree but if all the branches are too skinny or too thick, it doesn’t look as realistic or natural. Before we get to the branches though, we have to check out the trunk and see if there’s anything that needs to be changed or fixed there. Let’s have a look.
Now To the Branches
Here is a quick before and after.
Trident Maple #2
The four sides of Trident #2
On this Trident, I followed the same steps as I did with the first Trident. Let’s take a look at the trunk.
Another quick before and after
Well there you have it! Two more trees in the production line. I’m looking forward to the continued development of these trees and lessons I’ll learn from them. As I write more about them in the future, I hope that you too will learn some lessons and have some ideas of what to do on your own trees. As always, please feel free to comment on this post and share your thought, observations and questions.