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Follow-up – defoliating a shohin Japanese maple

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I fully defoliated a shohin Japanese maple about six weeks ago. Here’s what the tree looked like after removing all of the leaves.

Shohin Japanese maple – April 30

After a week, small buds started to appear along the branches.

May 10 – new buds appear

Tiny back buds

The first new leaves waited almost a month before opening.

May 25 – new leaves make an appearance

Back buds begin to open

More back buds appear

Once the leaves began to open, the tree’s appearance changed rapidly.

May 31

June 4

June 11

Now that most of the leaves are open, it’s clear that the foliage is still too dense. When these leaves harden off, I’ll look to remove every other leaf and/or reduce leaf size in an effort to let light into the tree’s interior. Without additional light, the new shoots won’t have much of an opportunity to develop which would undo some of the benefit of defoliating in the first place. Cutback and thinning of new shoots will likely wait until fall.

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Comments

  1. Jonas, I like how you keep bringing back trees over time and show us what you are doing with them. This little maple is one of my favorites. So please explain why you are defoliating it and what you will do with the new shoots. Are they to replace some old branches?

  2. This is a really great post Jonas. The follow up is really nice. Quick question for you, do you rub off the buds that develop in areas that you don’t want at the May 10 or May 25th time points? Second question, would you pinch buds with this second flush of growth or is already weak enough?

    • Thanks Lars, great questions! Rubbing off the buds I don’t want is likely a good idea but I was curious to see how the tree developed without doing this. As for the pinching, I was wondering the same thing. I pinched the strong shoots as they emerged and let the weak ones simply grow. I hope to refine both of these approaches over time during subsequent defoliations.

  3. Hi Jonas, did you cut the whole leaf off, or did you leave the stem still attached? I have heard of defoliating being done both ways but dont have it clear if there are different reasons or objective to each. Thanks, I always look forward to your beautiful and informative posts.

    • Thanks Iris! If you click on the first photo you can see short stems where I cut the leaves. As buds don’t appear along the petiole where the cut is made, I don’t know that it makes a big difference where the cut is made. The reason I cut the leaves instead of pulling them back is that I didn’t want to risk hurting the buds at the base of the petioles or breaking fine branches.

  4. This is a blob, man. How can one like such a thing? It’s NOT aesthetical. Only a devious mind could like this.

    • Strongly disagree. The unique branch structure and movement on this tree is lovely. Beauty is in the eye…

  5. Jonas thanks for all the info you bring us, both experimental stuff like the defoliation of the J. Maple as well as basics which I always need to be reminded of.
    Thanks, kirk