Brian VFJapanese Maple February 27, 2021 1 Minute

The primary branches on this tree were made by thread-grafting, and the tree itself was made from an air-layer of nursery stock I bought in 2008. So this tree is pretty artificially developed. However, to keep growth dense and movement present with trees, sometimes this is the only way to go. So long as the result is convincing, the means don’t matter.

The trouble with this tree is that the left trunk has a long span with no branches on the right side. In time, the right trunk sill fill in the lower part of the space, but the left trunk does need a branch somewhere along this span:

Ideally it will be between two left branches, creating an alternating branch pattern…somewhere around the blue circle, on the outside of a bend:

Read more about this fascinating technique over at NEBARI BONSAI