Liquid Amber Trunk Chop?

[isaacvdh]

I have what I believe to be a liquid amber that I picked up cheap. I've root pruned and placed back in the same pot in April. The buds are starting to swell atm. I think I might trunk chop and maybe air-layer a few of the upper branches.

Any ideas about the best height to chop the trunk? I think I could probably get 3-4 air-layers up top. Anyone tried this with liquid ambers? I'm pretty new to bonsai and using this as a learning experience.

[isaacvdh]

Anyone tried this with a liquid amber before?

[shibui]

Sorry Isaac. I missed this first time round so thanks for the bump.

Liquidamber are great at budding after a chop. You can already see they have a tendency to sucker from the base and from the roots which is a good indicator they can cope with the chop.
Occasionally the trunk doesn't bud but you'll always get lots of shoots from the base as a fallback position.

[Patmet]

I had success trunk chopping a nursery Liquidamber winter last year. Similar sized tree, and I did the chop around the height you have marked maybe a little lower. Unfortunatey I can't find any pictures of the chop, but this one is the growth response in spring/summer. I would also recommend doing a straight cut not a slanting one.

20220128_160943.jpg

[shibui]

I just had a second look at the trunk photos and can see there's already some small shoots visible below your proposed chop so there's no problem with this trunk shooting new branches.

[isaacvdh]

Today I did some air layers and will see how they go. I'm thinking the lower one might encourage budding for when I finally trunk chop.

[shibui]

The lower one will certainly encourage back budding.
The real question is whether the 6 month delay will be financially worthwhile given that liquidamber are relatively easy and cheap to get hold of.
Layering for the practice is all good but layering for dubious bonsai potential is questionable.
I'd need really good bonsai potential to make it worth the time, resources and effort to layer anything, especially when layering delays regrowing the real bonsai below for up to 6 months or more.