AusBonsai

Hello folks!

Found this maple? potential yamadori on a Sunday stroll. It has a nice taper at the base of the trunk. Anyone know if it's a trident or something else?

Cheers,

Jack

That second picture is a real, shocker Jack but fortunately the first is clear. Definitely a trident maple.

Haha yes it is!
Would it be worth waiting until winter until digging this tree out? Or go for it now?

That depends how desperate you are.
Normal and safest time to transplant trident maple is when they are dormant in winter. Then you can cut almost all the roots off and it will still survive. Pruning trident roots quite hard is important in order to get a good nebari (surface roots) for the future.

Some growers have been experimenting with different repotting times. Tridents have been successfully root pruned in autumn (March) and I have root pruned some smaller ones as trials in November and December. They have survived but one lost all its leaves and looked dead for a few weeks before it started growing again. This means it is probably possible to dig a trident now. It will probably survive but that will depend how many roots you need to cut and how much you cut the top back and how it gets looked after subsequently, etc.

Thanks for the information Shibui. I will most likely work on this towards the end of Autumn.