bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - Trident Maple Defoliation

Here is a photo of one of my Trident maple bonsai which was recently completely defoliated.

Every leaf was carefully removed in mid-June and now in mid-July it looks like this, great! The reason it looks so good is because we have been pinching ALL the new shoots every other day. The leaves are remainig tiny and with the colorful spring growth.

Yes, lots of work, but worthwhile to maintain the size and extremely short branch ramfication of this specimen.

This bonsai has been in training for over 25 years and the branches are well proportioned, large ones on bottom and thinner ones near the top, so it was not necessary to partially defoliate the tree. It was partially defoliated several years ago, but now that it has developed into a pleasing form, the entire tree is defoliated.

One reason it looks so good (and the color is off on this image when I optimized it, the color changed...) is because Matt Ouwinga from Chicago came to our local club and showed our members how to pinch the new shoots after defoliation.

So the key factor is the time consuming technique of pinching the new shoots nearly every day. Lots of work, but worthwhile.

By the way, this bonsai was not pinched daily in the past because I did not think it was developed enough and because it was time consuming. I do NOT pinch the new shoots of defoliated bonsai unless they are developed to my taste and standards.

Bill

The first photo (early spring leafing out) was taken in May 2003

The seond photo (small foliage) was taken in July 2006