What are the technical key points for trident maple bonsai and potted cultivation?

  Trident maple is a deciduous tree, up to 30 m tall. It can be planted as a solitary specimen or in groups on lawns, or mixed with other trees on hillsides and beside ponds, and in China it can be planted in gardens as a shade tree. Because of its unique ornamental value, trident maple bonsai cultivation is gradually becoming favored by people today, with trident maple, red maple and others used as bonsai, so today the editor will talk about trident maple bonsai and potted cultivation techniques.

  (1) Transplanting: Select healthy, pest- and disease-free young trident maple trees as transplanting stock. The young trees are required to be no more than 60 cm tall, and the best transplanting time is late winter or early spring.

  (2) Preparation of bonsai growing soil: Choose an open-mouthed pot container, and lay a mixture of perlite, river sand, peat and rice husks at the bottom of the container to a height of 1/4 of the container height. After laying, cover it with a layer of fallen leaf fragments and leaf mold, then cover with a layer of plastic film with ventilation holes. Apply base fertilizer on the film, and cover with a mixture of mountain soil, pond mud and sorghum husks up to 3/4 of the container height. Then seal the container mouth with a wooden lid, place it in a refrigerator at minus 5 degrees to 0 degrees, treat for 2-3 hours, then take it out and leave it at room temperature for later use. (The mass ratio of perlite, river sand, peat and rice husks is 1:4:3:2; the mass ratio of fallen leaf fragments to leaf mold is 1:3; the mass ratio of mountain soil, pond mud and sorghum husks is 2:2:1; the base fertilizer consists of the following substances by mass: 25% bean fertilizer, 30% green fertilizer, 20% nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium compound fertilizer, 15% decomposed manure, 3% trace elements, 1% microbial fermentation bacteria, and the remainder eggshell powder; the trace elements are a mixture of iron, calcium, cobalt, zinc and selenium in a mass ratio of 1:3:1:3:1; the moisture of mountain soil and pond mud is 45%.)

  (3) Potting treatment: Fill the bonsai growing soil prepared in step (2) with moist river sand mixed with chlormequat, paclobutrazol and coconut shell activated carbon up to 5 cm from the pot rim. Disinfect the bonsai growing soil one day before planting, and choose February as the planting time. Before planting and potting, prune the branches and root system of the seedlings. After planting, water thoroughly and keep the surface soil moist.

  (4) Staged pruning treatment: Young plants should be topped and pinched to promote side branch growth. In early summer, cut off 1/3 of the trunk. When branch shoots grow beyond 20 cm, prune once, and after pruning apply a plant growth retardant to the wounds. At the same time, promptly prune trailing branches to keep the tree upright and elegant, with proper density. (The plant growth retardant is a mixture of 0.3% daminozide and hydrogen peroxide in a mass ratio of 2:5.)

  (5) Fertilizer and water management: Potted trident maples should be watered frequently to keep the potting soil moist. At the same time, apply organic fertilizer once each before spring budding and before leaf expansion, do not fertilize in autumn, and apply liquid compound fertilizer once in winter. (The liquid organic fertilizer has 2% trace elements added, and the nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium compound fertilizer content in the liquid compound fertilizer is not less than 30%.)

  (6) Temperature and light management: The suitable growth temperature for potted trident maple is 30 degrees. In winter, manage with full sun, and in summer, manage with half sun.

You will find all the knowledge about trident maple bonsai here

Trident maple, as you can tell from the name, is certainly a maple shaped like a triangle, and many humorous netizens also say the trident maple looks like a duck's foot. It really does look very similar, so the name duck-foot maple was born. The trident maple's trunk is thick and sturdy, giving the feeling of an aged plant with stories, one that has experienced many hardships. Because its story-like appearance attracts many people's attention, how should trident maple bonsai be planted and cared for? Don't worry, the editor will tell you right away.

Transplanting and trunk cutting

The trident maple has strong bud-sprouting ability and roots quickly. Transplanting is best from November of the solar calendar, when the leaves turn red and yellow, to before Qingming Festival of the following year. At this time, managing transplanted stumps is relatively easier, and off-season transplanting also has a relatively high survival rate, though management is more troublesome. What is the same is that a humid environment, reasonable soil structure, and reasonable light are required.

Before transplanting, carefully analyze the stump to be transplanted. Choose one with a good root base, ideal taper, natural wild charm, and vigorous growth. Dig at a distance from the root base according to its size, and retain the root system as much as possible. For the first trunk cut, leave a larger margin and be conservative. Roots and branches are inevitably damaged during transport, so after arriving home, cut the trunk again according to your conception. This also applies when buying stumps from other places with long transport times. This second trunk cut still should not be fully final; leave one to two more bud points than envisioned, because the positions of buds on the stump are not obvious, and after a long winter the first bud may very likely die, so retaining one to two extra bud points is very necessary. Thick roots and old roots can be finalized in one go, but try to retain finger-thick young roots, whose ability to produce fine roots is strong, and on which survival and budding entirely depend.

After cutting the roots and trunk well, we should treat the cuts. Find a sharp chisel to trim the wounds so that the transition is natural and the marks from the artificial saw cut are removed. Thick root cuts should also be trimmed flat with an inverted cut. Apply healing agent or white glue to the trimmed wounds once or twice, and after they dry slightly naturally, firmly apply adhesive tin foil paper to the wounds. Practice has shown that after applying tin foil paper, the wound healing speed increases greatly. This method can also be used on other tree species, with obvious results. After trimming thick roots, apply erythromycin ointment. The purpose is to prevent the large cuts on thick roots from being easily infected by bacteria. After application, it provides protection and relatively earlier rooting.

Proper treatment of roots and trunk is crucial to survival and growth speed. I hope everyone will not mind the trouble and do the work thoroughly, laying a solid foundation for future cultivation.

Planting and care

Planting methods include pot cultivation, ground cultivation, and brick-pond cultivation. Each planting method has its own characteristics, and because each person's situation differs, they should be treated separately.

Choose some dry fine river sand, which can be replaced with purchased perlite, some dry garden soil or leaf mold, and a small amount of coarse river sand for later use. What should be explained here is that soil varies from place to place. The key is that after mixing, it remains loose, breathable, and drains quickly. Because trident maple is not strict about soil structure, generally non-sticky soil and non-compacted soil are completely fine.

Many people in cities live in buildings, so they generally choose pot cultivation. For unformed trees, large pots and deep pots should be used. In practice, growing trident maple in large pots still gives relatively ideal growth speed. In 2007, I conducted an experiment. With reasonable soil and proper water and fertilizer management, the new top branch reached 2.7 cm in thickness in the first year, and side branches ranged from 1.5 cm to 2.5 cm. This data cannot fully explain everything, but what can be certain is that urban apartment dwellers can likewise start from saplings, and small and medium potted trident maples can basically take shape after 3-5 years of cultivation.

For pot cultivation, cover the drainage hole with a tile piece or gauze net, and place a layer of prepared coarse sand, with thickness flexibly adjusted according to the depth of the pot. Then spread a layer of mixed soil made evenly from half fine river sand and half garden soil. Place the treated stump, set the angle, and fill the root space with the mixed soil. In this step, note that using dry mixed soil helps the soil fully contact the spaces between roots. Slowly tamp it firm with a bamboo stick to avoid hollow spaces. Bury the soil slightly deeper than the original exposed position, but leave 1-2 cm of space from the pot surface to prevent the soil from being too high and causing future loss of water and fertilizer.

At this time, water once to settle the roots, and water thoroughly. Those potting and cultivating in winter need to be bagged to keep warm and moist, and should be checked once every few days. Before budding, the soil's water requirement is very small, and moist is enough. After new buds emerge, remove the bag, spray water on the trunk 3-5 times a day, and keep the soil normally moist. A friend asked me how to know when watering is needed. Simply put, when the soil surface looks somewhat white, it can be watered. Trident maple has a high water requirement. After normal growth, potted plants need water once a day, including on cloudy summer days, except on rainy days. Frequently spray water on the leaves. A trident maple lacking water grows slowly and has thin, weak branches.

Vigorously growing plants should be tested with fertilizer by the end of May. For pot cultivation, liquid fertilizer is better. There are many fertilizer types. Choose organic fertilizer and dilute it with water 10 times. In the evening, pour a few ladles into each pot, and the next morning water thoroughly once. During the entire growing season, do this once every 10-15 days. Combined with good weeding and loosening of the soil, I believe growth at this time will surely be vigorous. For pot cultivation, note reasonable soil structure, light, water and fertilizer. Large pots must have the soil changed every 2 years, and small pots need annual soil changing and root pruning, which are the prerequisites for ensuring rapid growth.

For friends who have land, cultivating bonsai is like adding wings to a tiger. Choose a higher, level plot, with half-sand half-soil being best. After loosening the soil, dig a hole and plant, in the same way as pot cultivation, and with the same management, but growth speed is better than in pots, and the amount of watering drops noticeably. What is different is that when small and medium stumps are planted in the ground, later pruning is inconvenient, the lower branches are too close to the ground, ventilation is slightly poorer, cascading-style bonsai cannot be cultivated, and when herbicide needs to be sprayed it easily lands on the branches, causing phytotoxicity. Ground cultivation and pot cultivation each have their strengths, and measures should be adapted to local conditions.

At present, besides pot cultivation and ground cultivation, there is another method used relatively often. The brick-pond cultivation method fully absorbs the advantages of the previous two and avoids their disadvantages. For friends who have land, this method is worth promoting.

Use standard bricks to build a pond on flat ground. The size is best enlarged by more than half according to the size of the stump base, and the height depends on the height of the stump, generally 40-60 cm. It is best to leave 2 m of space around each stump pond. The bottom layer of the stump pond can hold relatively fertile soil; if there is pond mud or farmyard manure, some can be added. In the middle, place a layer of cultivation soil. For the upper soil where the stump is planted, use mixed soil containing sand. Before planting, tamp the middle and lower soil firmly to avoid sinking after planting the stump, which would change the stump's angle.

The advantages of the brick-pond planting method are shown in the following aspects:

1  Newly collected stumps using this method will not suffer root waterlogging; of course, old stumps should not suffer root waterlogging either.

2  Compared with direct ground planting, it increases the height, making observation easier, and allowing more accurate pruning.

3  Also because of the increased height, ventilation is good and light is good, so the lower branches can better absorb light and heat, and growth speed will be somewhat faster.

4  When spraying herbicide, it will not land on the stump. In ground planting, because the lower branches of the stump are often too close to the ground, herbicide spraying inevitably lands on the branches.

5  Exposing roots in ground planting requires manually digging away soil, but with this method that is unnecessary. Simply remove one layer of standard bricks, and over time the roots will naturally become exposed. If one layer is not enough, remove two.

6  Practice has found that the stump's roots first grow outward, and when they are about to touch the bricks, they grow downward, so this does not affect the future aesthetic problem of the roots.

Disadvantages:

1  Increased cost. One standard brick costs more than 2 mao. For a medium-sized stump the first time, this requires an added cost of 20 yuan, and the bricks can be used repeatedly for several years.

2  In the first year, more water is needed than in ground planting. Once the roots grow underground, it is completely the same as ground planting.

The advantages outweigh the disadvantages, so it is still worth promoting and applying.

Branch selection and pruning

For normally growing stumps, by late May the branches are about one meter long, and at this time branches can be selected according to future styling needs. Before selecting branches, observe carefully, conceive, ponder more, and ask friends for reference more. Cut off absolutely useless branches, then select branches step by step from bottom to top. Because trident maple grows quickly and branches grow straight upward, side branches that need to grow horizontally must be manually pulled to the ideal angle with aluminum wire or rope. After changing the branch angle, the branch tip should be fixed upward with a bamboo stick. Branches growing downward or horizontally will slow down, which is related to apical dominance in plants. Entering June is the plum rain season, and strong wind and heavy rain occur from time to time. At this time, new branches that are thick may already be nearly one centimeter, but not yet fully lignified, so strong wind breaking branches is very possible. They need to be fixed and reinforced with wood or bamboo, which can be done together with branch selection.

Useless branches and buds should be pruned regularly to concentrate nutrients for the needed branches. For places lacking branches, approach grafting can be used. Trident maple has fast healing ability. Simply remove the bark from the mother stump, approach the new branch, tie it tightly and wrap it well, and it will heal together in one month. After a year of growth, the mother branch can be cut off the next year. The same method can be used for missing roots by finding some small old trees for approach grafting.

The trident maple has opposite buds, and during cultivation it will grow two opposite branches. At this time, one branch should be removed as early as possible. If left too long, a swollen-belly branch will form, affecting appearance. After one growing season, once the thickness reaches the expected range, it should be cut short; those not thick enough continue to be allowed to grow. If a certain branch reaches the desired thickness during the growing season, pinching the top can be used to control further thickening, and by the next spring it can be pruned into place. This avoids the possibility of branch loss due to unbalanced tree vigor. Many friends like to prune heavily after leaf fall, but this is actually inappropriate. In the climate of southern Anhui, winter is still relatively cold. After frost injury, if budding is not in place, it must be cultivated anew, increasing cultivation time. If there is a greenhouse, that is another matter.

Off-season transplanting and management of weak stumps

Stumps collected in the normal season with a relatively good root system can be cultivated outdoors and will grow relatively well without shading. For stumps purchased or dug in the off-season, we must treat them seriously. After mid-April, temperatures rise and branch growth has already begun. At this time, stumps dug and brought back should first be soaked overnight in clean water with rooting powder added, with a little branch exposed outside to breathe. The next day, treat them as usual for trunk cutting. Coat the roots with rooting powder mixed into yellow mud slurry, plant the stump in fine sand, and bury it deeper than usual, at most up to more than half of the stump. Keep the sandy soil moist, and build a shed with 90% shade netting for cover. The frequency of water spraying should be increased, and all newly grown branches should be retained. Depending on the collection time, branch selection can be done in mid-to-late August or the following year.

For those with very weak growth, we should stop pruning and fertilizing. Before May, they should be shaded, sprayed with water more often, and must not be fertilized. A moist feeling in the soil is enough. Water with rooting water. If conditions permit, some garden maintenance liquid medicine can be purchased, which I believe will help somewhat with poor growth and root recovery.

After reading the cultivation knowledge for trident maple, many friends who have trident maple bonsai at home must have gained some help. When dealing with a small plant like a bonsai, you must be more patient than with large plants, because small things can only be grown well with care, and they are not as drought- and flood-tolerant as large trees. The trident maple has its own unique elegance. In summer, the leaves are green; in autumn, it is a scene of yellow; in early spring, it sends out tender buds, and the scarlet color is very eye-catching. Friends who like stories and love color changes will surely fall in love with trident maple bonsai, and through the trident maple can feel the changes of the four seasons.

The difference between penjing and potted plants

The difference between penjing and potted plants

Figure 1: Penjing work
Title: Ancient Trees and Clear Pool
Tree species: Chinese elm
Stone type: turtle-vein stone
Specifications: 150 cm x 80 cm x 100 cm
Author: Zhao Qingquan

Figure 2: "Potted plant" in contemporary Chinese

Figure 3: Foreign bonsai work
Tree species: trident maple
Specifications: height 45 cm
Author: Wolfgang Putz (Austria)
Photography: Wolfgang Putz

Penjing is an artwork that uses plants, stones, water, soil, accessories and other materials, through the bonsai creator's artistic layout techniques of shrinking dragons to inches and making a thousand miles near at hand, and special horticultural cultivation techniques, meticulous processing, and careful maintenance, to typically reproduce the charm of nature within a pot. It possesses the aesthetic characteristics of both beauty of image and beauty of artistic conception. For example, Figure 1, Mr. Zhao Qingquan's penjing work "Ancient Trees and Clear Pool," uses several Chinese elms of different sizes, a few stubborn stones covered with turtle-vein patterns, a handful of fertile soil covered with moss, a pool of clear water that reaches the bottom, and a white shallow-mouthed water basin as materials, forming a natural beautiful scene of woods by the water. The trunk of the main tree is thick and sturdy, twisted and ancient, and against the backdrop of many small trees, it appears even more vigorous and antique. The uneven water bank line and the accent stones on the right pot surface set off the clarity of the pool water. At this point, looking again at the title of the work, the author's creative intention is instantly revealed completely - this work is meant to express the style of ancient trees beside a clear pool! At this point, the work's beauty of image and beauty of artistic conception are fully released.
The term "penjing" first appeared in the Song dynasty writer Su Shi's book Gewu Cutan, and has a history of more than 900 years of use. Before that, penjing was called "penchi," "penhua," "pencao," "penzai," and so on.
Penjing is an artistic crystallization of traditional Chinese culture. While the Japanese massively accepted Chinese culture during the Tang dynasty, they also introduced the then-popular Chinese penjing art and carried it forward. Perhaps the more popular name for Chinese penjing at that time was "penzai," so Japanese penjing was called "bonsai." In the early twentieth century, people in Europe, North America, Latin America, Oceania, Africa and other regions successively began to take an interest in bonsai and frequently invited Japanese bonsai artists to teach bonsai techniques in various places. Therefore, they followed Japanese bonsai styling, classification and terminology, also calling bonsai "bonsai," and moreover, based on Japanese pronunciation, named it "Bonsai."
Today, with the evolution of penjing culture over thousands of years, in our country people have selected the term "penjing" from the complicated names such as "penchi," "penhua," "flowers in a pot," "penzai," "xiezijing," "flowering trees in a pot," "scenery in a pot," "small scenery in a pot," "small flower scenery in a pot," "pot tree" and so on, as the proper term for this art form. At the same time, the term "penzai" in contemporary Chinese has been defined as another art form, namely planting plants in pots without any styling treatment, thereby turning the object of appreciation into simply the plant's stems, leaves, flowers, fruits and so on, rather than the natural scenery with artistic conception embodied by penjing. This art form, in the early period of the founding of the People's Republic, was also called penzhi.
However, in Japan, as well as in countries and regions influenced by its bonsai culture, "bonsai" refers neither to what we call "penjing" nor to what we now call "potted plants," but to artworks that have already undergone artistic treatment and express various wonderful tree forms in nature, equivalent to our country's tree penjing, though the two are not completely identical. Our country's tree penjing originates from nature and is higher than nature. It not only appreciates the beauty of the tree's image, but also appreciates the realm and mood expressed through the image, inducing resonance in the viewer's thoughts, thereby entering the appreciation level of the work's beauty of artistic conception. Therefore, Chinese penjing works generally are given titles, summarizing the work's artistic conception characteristics and expressing the theme, so that viewers can understand from the title and feel moved by the scene. Foreign bonsai works generally only indicate the tree species, specifications, and author (or collector) and other objective information, with no titles at all. For example, Figure 3, the bonsai work by Austrian bonsai artist Wolfgang Putz, shows a beautiful trident maple growing attached to mountain stone. It is only meant to express the beauty of its tree form, with no consideration at the humanistic (spiritual) level. Chinese root-on-stone penjing generally, through the shaping of the mountain stone and the arrangement of the tree's roots and tree form, conveys to the world a praise of tenacious life, and is extremely rich in humanistic flavor.
In Japan and some countries, there is also an art form called "Suiseki," which is making stones taken from mountains or riverbeds into the shapes of mountains and rivers, and then placing them in pots filled with water or sand grains. This form is equivalent to our country's landscape penjing.
Therefore, what we Chinese call penjing (Penjing) should include the two foreign art forms of bonsai (Bonsai) and suiseki (Suiseki); while "potted plants (that is, penzhi)" in our contemporary Chinese includes penjing (Penjing).