orange dream smooth japanese maple

order: sapindales
family: sapindaceae
genus: acer
species: palmatum
cultivar: 'Orange Dream'

First Story

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19 january 2014

colourful autumn foliage 2012.

This japanese maple cultivar is a very vigorous one with growth reaching over 50 cm within a single season. New leaves emerge in the spring in pairs. Its colour is yellow with reddish tips which slowly turns into mid-green as summer approaches. When colder days of autumn are around, they begin to turn into a fiery amber. Right before they fall, they are almost as red as those of the wild species. New branches carry chlorophyll for many years before eventually becoming woody.

My intention with this plant is to train it into a middle-sized (chuhin) bonsai. As soon as I brought this metre tall plant back home in early autumn 2012, I pruned it back to only some 30 cm, leaving the two trunk lines diverging at the soil level. I want to have one thicker main trunk and a more slender one growing sideway. They call this kind of styling the "father-and-son". In order to achieve shorter internodes, I gave it a root prune while repotting and was very easy with fertiliser and water before the breaking of buds. Despite this the plant sent out shoots with long internodes and large leaves. Perhaps I need not care about this at this stage as it's still a long way to go for the tree to mature. I'll just continue to do what I do and record the whole progress as it grows and ages.

buds breaking early spring 2013.

late spring / early summer 2013.

Update

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28 june 2015

after unfolding in spring 2015.

It's true what they say; Japanese maples do not respond well to major pruning, especially outside of their native region. The cut I had made in late 2012 have shown absolutely no sign of healing. The Japanese wound paste proved to be a total rubbish. It didn't heal or prevent disease. Fungi made their ways down to the base of the trunk thereby ruining my little tree. In order to stop the fungi from spreading, I had to remove the son (the thinner side stem) which has begun to wilt and shrink, and rework on the wound of the previous lead. I seriously don't know if the main stem is going to make it, now that there are 2 major cut areas on it that are open to fungus attack. It'll be a pity to loose the tree because it has already ramified quite nicely in the past years. The wounds have to heal before the next fungi find their ways here. Right now I'm doing all that I can to prevent fungus attack. I'm being extra careful when watering the plant so as not to wet the wound at the base. Also, I've moved it to our sheltered balcony to protect it from being exposed to wet weathers outdoors. Only when it's absolutely sunny do I bring it out in the open. If it's terribly rainy outside, I'd bring it indoors. I'm considering dabbing some fungicide onto the wounds as preventive measures, but ultimately if callus doesn't form, I won't be able to keep the plant for long. Hopefully it does. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

lychee

order: sapindales
family: sapindaceae
genus: litchi
species: chinensis

First Story

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26 october 2014

Lychee is a very sweet and fragrant fruit originating from south China. It is related to longan and rambutan within the soapberry family and is in fact very often mistaken with the former. It has a sweeter note not unlike longan with added sweetener. For optical differentiation, the fruits are minimally bigger than longans and its bright pink-red peels are more ruggedly textured. The size difference is also reflected in the plants' growth like the leaves and stems. I like to compare the flesh of lychee and longan with rambutan too, because all of them are white and translucent. It's not entirely easy to discern the trees when they are not bearing fruits. All of them have compound leaves with oblong to lanceolate leaflets that are somewhat drooping. They are soft and colourful when young but turn dark green when stiffened. Their flower panicles are also very similar in appearance, with lychee having the biggest bouquets.

Regarding the fruits, there's a saying "after the first day, the colour changes; after the second, the fragrance; after the third, the taste; and after the fourth, everything else changes". So keeping them fresh is really challenging. You usually want to eat them all on the day you buy them. Save some of the shiny black seeds to start new plants. I planted my seeds right after eating the fruits in 2012. They started to sprout only after a week. New thread-like shoots elongate without cotyledons and from them leaflets of compound leaves gradually grow bigger and bigger. New growths are so soft, they are hanging, as if they don't get enough water, the sun is too hot or the wind is too strong. I learned not to be worried about it, as they usually continue to grow and eventually harden off.

Lychee needs bright light to grow, but because new leaves are usually very tender I avoid the sunniest site. It prefers slightly acidic soil. The tendency of chlorosis is likely. Salt tolerance is moderate to low, so go easy with fertiliser to prevent burning. I regularly feed my plants and periodically flush out the accumulated salts in the soil with clear water. I prefer ammonia-based fertiliser over nitrate-fertiliser because that saves me the fuss about nutrient imbalance with most plants. In the summer when the plants are placed outdoor, I use manure-pellets. Though it hasn't been a problem for my lychee plants, scale insects on my longan plants have managed to deceive my eyes for a while. So I would say, watch out.

R.I.P

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21 april 2016

Unfortunately my lychee is gone after 4 years. It dried out completely once in the summer last year, from which it must have received a tremendous amount of damage in its root system. In the winter when it's so vital to watch its well-being, again I left it to dry out numerous times. It finally bid me goodbye. Leaves became crisp from the top down to the bottom. Sigh... You'll always be remembered as a beauty!

The lesson is: always keep the soil moist and never leave your lychee plants thirsty.

longan tree

order: sapindales
family: sapindaceae
genus: dimocarpus
species: longan

In late August, I organised a barbecue in our garden next to the pond and invited some friends over. Beside satay skewers, chicken wings and wraps of radish and shrimps, I also served a tropical fruit called longan. Longan means dragon eye in chinese language. The name is given to the fruit probably because of its resemblance to an eyeball with the white translucent flesh covering the dark shiny stone. In my hometown, Kuching, the fruit is called "mata kuching" in Malay language, which is translated as "cat's eye". There are theories saying that the city got its name through this fruit, because there used to be longan trees growing on the riverbanks, along which the city is laid out. Like maple, longan belongs to the soapberry family. Other more familiar members include lychee, rambutan, and horse chestnut.

After the barbecue, I saved some of the stones to start new plants with. I planted five stones in a planter, two of which struck after a week and are currently growing healthily. Two more are struggling to develop their first leaves. Acknowledging that it's a bad time to start new plants, I'm still keeping hope that the young seedlings will make it through the long winter months.

smooth japanese maple

order: sapindales
family: sapindaceae
genus: acer
species: palmatum
*compare downy japanese maple (acer japonicum), fullmoon maple (acer shirasawanum) and siebold's maple (acer sieboldianum).

seedling with cotyledons and first pair of true leaves.

We gathered some seeds from some beautiful maple trees last autumn. Those trees have tiny leaves of not more than 10cm across. Back home I did scarification on some of the collected seeds and kept the rest in my seed collection. Those that have been scarified were subsequently kept in the refrigerator, sealed up in a transparent zippy bag filled with moist soil. They didn't sprout as soon as I expected. By March I thought it wasn't going to be anything, so I removed the bag from the fridge and placed it outdoor. A few weeks later, to my amazement, those seeds sprouted! I can't tell for sure how many percent sprouted, but in the end I could only find two surviving sprouts in the mass of soggy soil with the help of my tweezers. The rest was a mess.

Meanwhile I've also sown the remainder of seed stock directly into the ground. From this batch, I've got four surviving seedlings. Though they have been severely munched by insects and prolly other animals. My original plan was to leave them where they are to grow on their own for the first year, so I know if they can survive in the wild without human intervention. I gave up on this after my friend, with whom I collected the seeds had been nagging me to dig them out. I suppose this species, which is native to Japan does need protection from cold winter for their first few years, since it has a weaker growth than those that are native here. Now dug out, let's hope they survive the shock.

more leaves.