I followed the advice of Leong from bonsai south when he told me he defoliated his taiwan maples in mid-summer when the trees went through a dormant period in the hottest summer weeks. While certainly not his focus, Leong has some pretty well developed Taiwan maples and his nurseryman qualifications are unquestionable, so I dont doubt his advice was sound. However this one hasn't responded as expected.
I defoliated late in the last week of January after seeing a complete halt in growth for a couple of weeks. It has just started to burst in the last few days and there have been two drawbacks to the procedure... first, about 30% of the new leaves are about 60% larger than the largest old leaf. Second, there has been an annoying amount of dieback.
As a plus, the tree has shown the ability to bud back but many of these new buds are not in useful positions and will be rubbed off.
I dont have pictures as yet. I'll wait 'til it is fully leafed out. But I was wondering about other people's experiences with this fairly uncommon maple. Has this happened to you when defoliating your tree? I have a suspicion that because I cut the apex off recently and then a few weeks later defoliated the remaining, lower, descending branch, I may have been asking for trouble. But I didn't think of it at the time
. Anyway... Interested in anyone's opinion on this.
Cheers guys,
Ces.
