Acer Palmatum - Japanese Maple

Deb made a major discovery in the garden last week - two Japanese Maple (Acer Palmatum) seedlings just peeking their heads up. I'm not sure if it is a Japanese Maple seedling, but we have that tree in the front yard, the seed pods for the Japanese Maple have 6 to 8 seeds in them, the pods are winged, and there are lots of squirrels around the neighborhood that get really busy in Fall planting nuts for the Winter. More than a few of the nuts have sprouted in flower pots and beds come Springtime.

We watched the seedlings for a couple of days, and then I decided it would be perfect for a new bonsai plant, so I dug it up and transferred it to a 4" ceramic pot. As you can see in the photo, the largest seedling is about 2" high and has been out of the ground for about 8 - 10 days.

We visited the Golden State Bonsai Federation Collection in Oakland today. That collection has somewhere around 100 plants on display, and one is a particularly unique specimen. The Daimyo bonsai was given to the US Envoy to China when he was passing through Japan as a present for sitting President Abraham Lincoln in 1847.

The Docent at the Bonsai Collection agrees with my plan to let the seedling stay in the 4" pot for a year or more, then to transplant it into a larger pot for trunk growth and later into a bonsai pot for development as a bonsai plant. We'll see how it goes. The Docent also said that if the seedling grows too fast, some of the new growth should be taken off.

The older bonsai Japanese Maples are around 30" high, so this seedling has a ways to go. Here's a picture, again from the Federation Collection, of a grove of Japanese Maples. Deb likes the grove look, so I'm hoping to get at least 4 or five seedlings in this pot so I can develop these seedlings as a grove.