Hi Trish. If you had Japanese Maple seedlings this spring, you should have them again next spring I would think. I have both purple Japanese Iris and Japanese Rooftop Iris (cristata) to trade. I could ship the iris this fall or next spring if you would like either. let me know what you think. Regards, Elizabeth

Would love to have as many of your Japanese Maple seedlings as you can send. I have not yet got this years trade list up. I have the common orange daylily both single and double and also a pretty yellow named variety but I lost the tag. I have 3 or 4 kinds of historic iris and plain yellow daffodils. I have some rooted five-leaf Akebia (chocolate vine). Lots of Catnip plants, peppermint and I think spearmint. Also the eastern Wild Columbine and Confederate Violets. Anything interest you? Please let me know, Thanks, Carol

Dear Judy, I have hundreds of bigleaf maple seedlings, which I could bring bareroot to the Green Elephant. LMK if you want me to save some as they are going to be covered by a huge compost heap otherwise. These are 6" tall this year, but they will be 5' tall by this time next year; they grow fast. Please post to the Green Elephant String as it will keep it up on the first page of the PNW exchange forum. Thanks, Jim Here is a link that might be useful: Green Elephant String

In April a grower in Washington state supplied my favorite local nursery with some clumped paperbark maples that were from 4 to 5 feet tall. They were bare root and I bought one because I thought they had been grown just like you described you wanted to do. The local nursery owner soaked the tree's roots in a root stimulator for me and I planted the tree to grow in a pot until the roots were strong enough for replanting in the dirt this coming September. At the time of potting, I still believed that the three trunks were growing from one root system. To my surprise, I found that not to be the case. Only two of the trunks leafed out, and the third trunk produced buds that would not leaf out. After several weeks of waiting I finally repotted the tree in a new pot with better draining potting soil. At that time, to my surprise, the tree trunks separated. I could see that they each had one independant main thick root, each with just a few feeder roots growing. The trunk that was only budding had the least amount of feeder roots. So I called the nursery and discussed the discovery with them. They told me that is how growers produce multi-trunk Paperbark maples. She said that all of the ones that the supplier had shipped them were the same way and they were labeled Clumped Paperbark maples. A few days ago, I decided to again purchase one of the two remaining CPMs that they had not yet sold. That tree looked better filled out and had grown a better root system than the first one I had purchased. I noticed that the trunks on the newly aquired tree were about 6 feet tall and very nicely leafed out. But it was clear that to keep the trunks close to the same heights the nursery had to purne the main leaders to all be close to the same height at the 6 feet level. If I do not want the leader trunks to branch at that height, I will need to prune the remaining branches from that point to only grow with one leader for each of them as they acquire more height. I will most likely then let each of them grow in a modified leader form once they reach nine or ten feet high. Since your sapling is still so short you should have time to find two more single trunked paperbarks about the same height to prune the roots in such a way that all three tunks can survive and grow together and form one three tunked clumped version of the tree. Just make sure that all three trunks' roots are pruned to about the same size. Then plant them close together so that as the roots develop they will grow and interconnect with each other. When I repotted my first tree I separated the trunks about 5 inches apart from each other in the pot. but the nursery had kept the trunks of my second tree very close almost touching each other. When I purchased that tree I asked the nursery owner if that close spacing would cause problems as the individual trunks tried to spead, and he said that the tree would adjust itself and have no problems with all the trunks starting out that close. It will take years of growing before I can see the proof that he was correct. He should know more about it than I, so I plan on leaving the tree as is; especially, since the tree is doing so much better than my first one I would not want to take the risk of harming the tree by messing with the trunks' spacing.