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Will my japanese maples revive from severe animal bites

last year

I have three jp maple seedlings whose main trunks and branches were bited off by unknown animals during the winter. Is there any chance for them to revive? Can I take some action to save those poor lives? Thank you for advice!

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Comments (10)

cecily 7A
last year
Yes, they will grow new stems. The question will be how to prune them to achieve an attractive form. Please place wire cages around them to prevent any further browsing.
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
last year
They will very likely survive.....but they may not look like much for a few years :)

Japanese maples are very appealing snack items for hungry critters in winter....rabbits and deer in particular. I'd offer protection until they have some age and height to them.
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Blake, as someone who lives in your area and grows a lot of maples in containers, maybe my experience will be helpful to you. Late winter/early spring weather in the Puget Sound area can be very unpredictable - mild and balmy one day with freezing temps and snow the next. That said, I repot maples pretty much year round......it just depends on the reasons and when I've purchased them. A routine maintenance repotting (and one that may involve root pruning) I generally reserve for just before bud break, although I've done it in late fall as well. Hard to say exactly when that may be, as it seems to vary both with weather and the tree in question. After examining the repotting candidates for this year recently, I'd guess I'd start this process in about 2-3 weeks or mid to late March - the buds on my trees are looking very good and healthy and starting to show signs of coming to life. These also tend to be some of my larger maples, so working with the plant while it is still pretty much dormant is both easier on me and on the tree. But it is quite possible to repot JM's succcessfully when in leaf as long as they are small enough to handle easily and you can provide some additional specialized care to get them over the transplant hurdle. I also don't pay too much attention to soil temps at this time -- that doesn't seem to have too much bearing on container soils, as they don't hold the moisture as avidly as Puget Sound inground soils do and they do tend to warm sooner as well. FWIW, I wouldn't necessarily consider planting a new JM in the ground at this time of year as the soil is simply too wet, in fact it's too wet to plant much of anything and you can damage the soil if you attempt to work it in this condition. I also don't provide any special winter attention unless it is a very small plant - 2G or less. Mine are out there year round and have gone through some seriously cold temps without any problems. They are in pretty good sized pots, however - repotting is a lot of work and I tend to use larger containers (15G at least) just because they seem to fit the scale of the plant better and don't require repotting attention quite so often. I addition to the excellent and helpful information you find here, you might want to visit the Maples forum too. There are a number of us that grow JM's in containers that post there regularly and lots of good info about growing these trees, both in containers and in ground.
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You size the container to correspond to the size of the tree. I grow ALL my JM's in containers, typically starting out with young 1G sized plants. I immediately plant them up into about a 3G sized container and then routinely upsize them as they grow. My largest (and oldest) is in about a 25G sized container and that's as big as I can manage. You want a very durable and textural bark-based potting mix. These are difficult to find commercially so many container growers tend to make their own. I'd urge you to investigate both the 5-1-1 mix and the gritty mix discussed endlessly on the Container Gardening forum. Either will work perfectly well, however the gritty mix is less moisture retentive and faster draining than the 5-1-1 so watering frequently may be a bigger issue. I prefer the 5-1-1 as my summers tend to be very dry. If too much trouble to make your own, you can modify a packaged potting soil. Check back here for instructions if you wish to go that route . Also, be aware that if you live in a colder zone (below 7) you will need to provide winter protection for your potted JM's. If grown in a container, their roots are subject to cold damage/freezing at a relatively mild winter temp (below 25F for any extended period of time).
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James Wu
Original Author
last year
Thanks! I will get them protected by wire cages.
BillMN-z-2-3-4
last year
Clean, angled cuts like that indicate rabbits.

Deer chomps tend to be ragged, more like they've been chewed.
gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
last year
I must have very dainty deer in my area :-)) They can do some seriously delicate "pruning" of trees and shrubs in my garden...........No ragged chomps - just missing flowers, buds and branch tips!
BillMN-z-2-3-4
last year
Rabbit bites always look like the pictures above, very clean, angled, sharp cuts, even on woodier parts of the shrub. Deer looks more 'bitten' and there should be tracks in the looser soils, where they step up to lower their head to reach downward.

Here's what I saw this Fall when I looked to see what was nipping my hollyhocks (lower center of pic).

And If it's deer, you'll generally see this around the area:

Of course, maybe those western blacktail deer are different than our whitetails idk.
BillMN-z-2-3-4
last year
And to back up my comments:

Pages 3 & 4

https://www.a2gov.org/departments/community-services/Documents/Monitoring%20Deer%20Impacts%20final%20report.pdf

Deer don't have upper teeth so they can't snip woody material cleanly.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
last year
last modified: last year
tree time is counted in decades ..

FIRST.. protect them immediately .. 3 feet of chicken wire .... wired to stakes .. buried at least 3 inches ..

and then walk away until fall .....

with no insult to the root mass.. it WILL rebud.. and it will grow with vigor ...

and a year or two later.. you can prune for the future ...

fert will not take year off this equation .. and nothing you can do will spend it up..

just water properly.. and have faith that it will recover.. prayer never hurts ...

ken

ps: that pot is ridiculously small for this TREE .. in spring.. while still dormant.. PLANT IT IN MOTHER EARTH ... where all trees belong.. by next fall it will be dying if its still in THAT pot ... depending where you are.. you might even plant it now .. big city name ...
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
last year
When deer browse on twigs, they use their lower teeth to push against as fleshy pad on the roof of their mouth. They then pull or turn their heads while pulling, which breaks the twig off. If you look closely at wounds left by deer feeding on twigs, you'll always see odd length fibers of wood at the break. When rabbits feed on woody twigs, if the cuts don't look like they've been made by a pair of sharp bypass pruners, it wasn't rabbits.

Your trees will be fine so long as the rabbits (or voles) don't start stripping the the young bark, which both are wont to do.

These are maple trees in the developmental stage of becoming a bonsai:

Above and below are same tree

All the trees lived and are doing fine.

Taken in Aug '21, This is the most recent image of the tree in the top 2 images:

Ideally, you should pay close attention to fine pruning and pinching in spring as the first new leaves are beginning to open. Do not allow the tree to grow wild or you'll face a much more serious pruning job later. If you start with a clean tree (no ugly branches and 12-18" internodes) it's much easier to keep the tree clean as it progresses. Ridding the trees of unwanted branches and promoting early ramification (branch density) without having a dozen branches all emanating from a common point should be a focal point.

Are these upright growers or weepers? Dissectum or palmate leaves?

Al
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
last year
the issue you are worried about is not about seedlings.. it would be about grafted specimens ... wherein the deer.. or other vermin.. may have cut off and eaten.. or worse.. just dropped there [rabbits are famous for that].. the favored valuable scion ... and left you with just understock [a seedling]... in other words.. they ate the 100$ plant.. and left you the 5$ plant ...

so no.. this is not an issue ... you could have mowed it to the ground ... or dear spouse weedwhacked it the the ground.. and any maple will come back to life ...

if you insist on killing it,,,;.. you will have to apply a stump killer or dig it up ....

ken

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