AusBonsai

In march 2011 I picked up this Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood' at a local nursery along with a number of others, they had been set aside for a customer 20yrs before who never returned for them. It had some minor root work done & was planted into a raised grow bed. Trimmed before growth started in august '11 it was allowed to grow freely until winter '12 when it was again cut back hard. By November '12 it had regained plenty of vigour & was ready to layer off the excess. Both layers are doing well on there own roots, the first has been off about 6wks, the second 2wks ago. It has put on new growth (out of pic) at the top & is full of new buds all over so I am hoping to get lots more branching to keep pushing it forward. Late winter I will dig to do major root work & at that time it may end up in a pot but most likely back in the ground to develop a bit more. The trunk is 4cm dia flaring to 8cm, overall height at the moment is about 40cm & finished will probably be closer to 50cm.

I have one of them Matt and my experience has been, (1) do not respond well to defoliation. They grow back the same size and do not reduce the spacing between internodes. (2) leaf burn and then some. Always makes them untidy. (3) slow to heal wounds, good Autumn colour though . This is in my enviroment and yours will be a whole lot different i guess. Good luck with it. Any learning will be good for us all on this hybrid.

Thanks for sharing your experience with them Bodhi. Maybe I will have to think about growing it for winter display, the interesting trunk & its spring & fall colour are superb so its shortcomings can be lived with.

I have a layer that I took of this type back in 2011. Apart from a little die-back where I neglected to seal a few years ago, mine is doing quite well, although I have had the same experience with Bodhi when it comes to defoliation - no changes seemed apparent at all. I have it under light shade cloth from November and just this week I decided to move it back out into unfiltered sun. The layer I took has had no leaf burn at all, but the parent tree has suffered from this, so I think light shade cloth during summer is a really good idea if you want to retain nice looking leaves through until Autumn. I have also found on the other hand the leaves that tend to be too shaded do not develop the typical bloodgood colouring and remain a dark green.

Chopped up dug & potted ready for spring.