Above - Fall 2025. Baby Dragon dwarf Shantung maple backlit with morning sun.
Fall 2025. Left - Baby Dragon, Center - Flower God on bonsai stand with a Happy Dragon behind. Right - Fire Dragon. I say all my bonsai are finished, only small refinements now. In this epic story this is what must be the happily ever after chapter.
Now on to the ultimate goal of producing flowers on the Shantung maple bonsai. Plus, growing new seeds produced this year from Fire Dragon. Some of the seeds are small so may be dwarfs.
Left - Third generation is orange, just like its mother, Eye of the Dragon, and 3rd straight year this orange color.
Right - Opening the door at dawn, not expecting anything, I got scared seeing my Fire Dragon glowing like fire.
Fall 2025 - Left - Pure Fun dwarf Shantung in the middle of June had all its leaves removed and they regrew to a size of only one inch across. Grafted dwarfs have larger leaves but these grew back the size of the original tree leaf. Fall color is light orange turning to light red. Right - Flower God showing the finished form in a very nice red.
June, 2025 and I am close to completing some bonsai designs. Left - Pure Fun dwarf Shantung maple had every leaf removed and the regrowth is very small one inch wide leaves. This is the leaf size of the orginal seedling dwarf. A very nice summer picture of small leaves fit for bonsai. Right, this Flower God is a literati style and the trunk design is c0mplete.
Left - from Neil Sperry’s Texas garden. He has a gardening radio talk show and publishes the biggest Texas gardening magazine. He states, “Fire Dragon, at least to my eye, is the best of the best.” Texas never had any fall color like this until Fire Dragon Shantung maple.
Above, right - Found this Shantung maple photo on the internet reported to be 350 years old at a Shrine in China.
October, 2024 - Early fall color this year from 4 very cold nights in the middle of September. ‘Flower God’, above, is a beautiful red and shows several new branches in the middle of the design. Also interesting is that the leaves of ‘Dark Dragon’ test plant, hung straight down for 2 months before it is cured of phytophora root rot. Metro Maples is now in its 30th year, thanks to Scott Hubble!
Yet named is this 3rd generation ‘Fire Dragon’ that goes by Flower God Seedling #5. It is a light green leaf all spring and summer in 2024, and takes the hot sun very well, much more than ‘Super Dragon’. Above left it is on the left of a ‘Fire Dragon’ to compare the summer leaf color. It produces a nice fall color, but this year, like many, it is in the orange range.
Spring 2024 and repotting and styling all is good. Flower God (left) progress is good after arriving just 3 years ago (below) and pinching new growth continues, although the middle branches will be allowed to grow to get bigger and stronger. It is now raised up to reveal roots on the right.
Spring color lasted a long time in the cool, wet month of April here in Tuscany. Fertilzer is a low nitrogen, high phosphorus and potassium blend to promote flowers and good health.
November 2023 update. Testing began on Fire Dragon tissue culture propagation that could lead to many more trees. Extreme heat in Texas, and also above average here in Tuscany, Italy. Then 23 inches of October rain in 27 days with 3 days of almost hurricane force winds. The dwarf Shantung maples here are in their first year of branch training so new shoots were pinched back all year, four or five times. From each pinching two branches emerge. One new shoot continues as a branch and the other becomes a side shoot.
Top left - Flower God.
Top right - Baby Dragon and a red Happy Dragon.
Bottom left - Flower God.
Bottom right - Pure Fun dwarf Shantung maple.
June 2023 and miraculous cuttings of Flower God dwarf Shantung maple are growing in only 16 days (left). At right, at only 30 days the shoots are 3 inches long. Soft growth is pinched, bark is removed, and stuck in mid June, in a plastic greenhouse and shaded after 8am. Rooting powder or water is not used as the leaves stay wet in the closed greenhouse. I have never seen anything root and grow so quickly.
Amazing beauty in fall 2022 in Italy. Many with better reds than ever before. At right and below are Baby Dragon pictures with lots of peach/orange and even some pink reds. One side always looked more red than peach. It had lots of variations among the leaves that are only seen when up close. The trees reward you when you treat them right and they are living happily ever after in their new home.
Late summer 2022 with a 2021 seedling from Flower God, which is a seedling from Fire Dragon, and is named Dark Dragon. For comparison there are also green leaves of a Flower God dwarf Shandong maple. This maple is slow growing. This year I lost 2 of the 7 new dwarf seedlings that came to Italy. I also lost The Blob which was the lone survivor from the 2015 batch. These deaths are explained on poor root systems that are weak and die in winter. The summer was unusually hot and dry and I added phosphoric acid to my mineral spring water to lower the pH and dissolve the lime.
Baby Dragon TM Shantung maple bonsai in early spring, 2022. Exceptional tapering trunk of good size with many branches just starting to be moved into position.
Spring in Tuscany is consistently cold and wet so very different from Texas where this tree was born. Leaves first appear about the same time as they would in Texas but then come out slowly for weeks while waiting on some heat. Colors are good and longer lasting in the cool weather.
This Baby Dragon looked even better in one of my small pots but is allowed to grow freely this year to heal scars, to thicken the branches, and to enlarge the trunk base roots.
Early November and for the first time The Bride of Dragon (top) has orange color that it got from its parent Sweet Spot. (Sweet Spot is the first Shantung maple picture I showed 24 years ago, way down below.) This dwarf is 7 years old. It is the only dwarf survivor out of 40 from that year. Texas fall color is yellow. Here in Tuscany the nights are always cool. Texas has long hot summers with hot over night temperatures and this can weaken a plant and make red/orange fall color hard to get.
Left - An unnamed seedling from the dwarf Eye of the Dragon. It is the red sheep of the 3rd generation Fire Dragon seedlings, as it is the only one out of seven that is not a dwarf. It is 2 years old and 2 feet tall and shows a lot of promise for great red fall color.
Flower God dwarf Shandong maple with the first fall color in Italy, October 21, 2021. It grew out with no pruning this year to heal the cuts made for shipping. Next year it is going to look like a bonsai.
It changed to fall colors early but despite that it did great. A Baby Dragon is up front and it too changed early. It is a little more orange than the usual bright yellow in Texas.
The weather is great in Tuscany, although I did have some dime size hail damage and summer is dry like Texas.
I had trouble with mildew when I arrived and a good fungicide is hard to find.
Tuscany arrival June 16, 2021.
42 plants arrive after an arduous journey to their new home in Italy.
August 12, 2021 - Nearly 2 months in Barberino di Mugello, Italy and life is good. It was a difficult journey for many of the plants. Twenty azaleas spent 2 whole weeks in boxes due to a shipping foul up in customs, but all are recovering and none died. Twenty two maples survived the trip and are loving their new climate.
Bottom - The first Flower God seedling that wouldn’t grow in Texas has finally started to grow and even though it now has much larger leaves, they are still very small. 5 more new 3rd generations seedlings are here also. All in all an expensive but worthy project.
Final day in the Dragon Lair with the Conqueror and His trees. Millions of maples added to North Texas and beyond, expanding the envelope for gardeners. All the glory does go to the trees, both Japanese and Shantung maples, for which without their bravery and beauty it would not have been possible. Flower God (on bonsai stand, center) stays for Scott at Metro Maples, so along with Fire Dragon, Baby Dragon, and Super Dragon they can reign over the land for many years to come.
May 31, 2021 - Here it is, the first seedling from the dwarf ‘Flower God’. Very, very small, too small. The largest leaf is just 1/4” long from base to tip. Shown with a ‘Fire Dragon’ leaf and its smaller dwarf seedling ‘Flower God’ leaf. The new dwarf of a dwarf is growing but so slowly that the long term viability of it is questionably. I will try my best to keep it going, of course. If it ever could get grafted for more vigor it would be just right. In 2 weeks I move to Tuscany.
May 14, 2021 - A day at Metro Maples while my house is shown to potential buyers. Above, Fire Dragon original tree is now almost a 16 inch caliper and every bit as good as I hoped it would be 21 years ago.
Original Super Dragon, lower left, is shaded by a Skinny Dragon and Golden Dragon. A Boskoop Glory Japanese maples, right, is a nice color contrast. At Metro Maples, May 14, 2021.
Super Dragon, an unpruned first graft, is 15 feet wide after a dozen years and fairly small, but very powerful.
These 5 Shantung maples were planted together with some roots exposed just 8 years ago. As usual, the spring leaf color is better when grown in a pot. In just a few months I will be living in Tuscany, Italy and a lot will change. Will there be Shantung maples there? One of the things my mom taught me is ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’
Spring 2021 - Some very light green leaves emerge in the early morning sunrise on the large Baby Dragon dwarf Shandong maple (top). The same day 2 new dwarf Flower God seeds emerge from the soil (left). The middle of last February had record cold, down to -2 degrees fahrenheit, with several inches of snow and the Texas electricity grid failed leaving me without power and very cold for 2 days. 110 people died.
Many plants died in north Texas from the cold. There are a 100 Shantung maples in the Dragon Lair, many in pots, and none were damaged.
January 2021 - The final chapter in my Shantung maple work begins. My wife and I have bought a house in Tuscany. The discussions with the bureaucrats in Italy and the USA have stalled. There will not be any authorized import of my historical trees. I have other plants I work with, like azaleas (bottom left photo) and they will be allowed after repotting and 3 months of inspections. I would say I have grown many plants in my harsh climate with success if you treat them right. Some say I have succeeded in expanding the envelope for Texas gardeners.
Fall 2020, the end of a historic year. The first ever seedlings from a dwarf Shantung. A Pandemic, lock-downs, riots, election fraud and even a mini-drought in the middle of a wet year. I am moving to Tuscany, Italy where my daughter lives and the climate is great. It is very doubtful these trees can go because of extremely stiff import restrictions.
Top - A potted Happy Dragon graft is the best blood red fall color again.
Bottom - Historic first seedling from a dwarf, a 3rd generation Fire Dragon.
November 2020 - Baby Dragon TM, left, is allowed to grow freely on the lower parts that is much more slower growing than the sunny top. Flower God, right, is allowed to grow a little extra this year to spend up trunk thickening. Less fertilizer in summer and more shade contributed to a better leaf condition in my summer extreme heat, and also lead to better fall color. I planted seeds from this on October 2, 2020 after 2 weeks cold stratification and 2 quickly germinated for my first seedlings of Flower God. Something I’ve looked forward to for years.
May 10, 2010 and the 7th set of leaves emerge on the new unnamed dwarf seedling from a dwarf Shandong maple (close-up left). The leaves are still very small and resemble a Trident maple. The trunk is sturdy for its small size and now is 1 3/4” tall. Petioles are short and internodes are close together. Largest leaf length is 5/8”. The picture on the right shows it in a 4 inch pot next to the large Baby Dragon bonsai.
Fairy Dragon is a small leaf dwarf Shandong maple from the original batch of seedlings from year 2010. There are six dwarfs from that year.
The color is great on May 14, 2019 as it has not been pruned or pinched this year. The bright red fades to a light green before turning medium green.
It is time to just let it grow and get bigger and healthier, meaning to increase its vigor and increase the trunk size. It is also planned to grow it on to a taller size bonsai.
Jack’s Classic Tomato Feed is used along with calcium nitrate. Jack’s is a low nitrogen fertilizer so when combined with calcium nitrate it comes out just right.
Baby Dragon TM dwarf at Metro Maples May 4, 2019. Ten year old graft twelve feet tall.
April 30, 2019 - Metro Maples is now 25 years old and still growing and selling thousands of maples to retail customers. Scott Hubble, the new owner, is doing great and you just might catch me out there sometimes on Saturdays writing sales orders. Happy Dragon, top right, stopped growing in early March and died in late April. I do have 2 grafts of it. It could not have died from cold. The Bride of Dragon, 4 years old, left, and a new Baby Dragon hardwood cutting, right.
Left - First Super Dragon blooms in six years and only the second time to see any. Right - Seeds are forming on Eye of the Dragon, early April 2019. I hand pollenated these flowers but they could also have been pollenated by insects which are numerous this spring. Even though there are so many nice maples already available, there is always room for more.
New bonsai dwarf Shantung maples in eaarly spring 2019. Both went into a bonsai pot just last year. Left is a ‘Pure Fun’ graft and below is my biggest ‘Baby Dragon’ bonsai. These great early colors must come from the extremely porous bonsai mix as all my others in normal potting mix did not have colors like these.
Baby Dragon dwarf Shantung maple on 3/22/19. This was started in 2011 and in 2012 the first bends were made with wire. This pot was used in the beginning.
Spring colors are always good on the 4 Baby Dragon bonsai that I grow but others in the ground or in nursery pots do not always flush with this kind of spring color. I am not sure why the ones in the ground have variable spring colors but I am researching it.
Flower God dwarfs are in bloom for the first time and so is an Eye of the Dragon dwarf. I’ve moved them close together to encourage cross pollination. I’ve got about 33 flower clusters of bloom between the two. It is also the first time for FIYA Dragon to bloom which developed into a mid-sized tree of only 10 to 15 feet. I am anticipating at least a few good seeds and anxious to see if another generation is much different.
Baby Dragon cascade ready for spring 2019.
Started in 2012 as a one year graft that is bent down with wire to produce the first 2 trunk curves.
The lower branches grow slower from less sunlight and tree dynamics that promote stronger growth upwards. In a couple more years the lower sections will have branching like the top. The bottom is allowed to grow strong this year.
For the first time the top looks good because the trunk has good size branches with smaller twigs. Next year all the top twigs get wired into a better position. The top is not allowed to grow strong.
Do you see a dragon shape in this design? The long tail is down low and a fire breathing head is in the making on the top left.
January 2019 and the first ever flowers on dwarf ‘Flower God’. The flowers are small as expected, but not expected are the orangish sepals and ovaries. Sepals are the sheaths that cover each flower. Only yellow on all other Shantung flowers. A few are female with the ovary too small to see, but have the usual shortened stamens. A great day.
November 24, 2018 and visiting a customer’s Fire Dragon and other Shantung maples.
This 6 year old dwarf named ‘Flower God’ is in a bonsai pot for the first time in 2018.
Despite a lot of root pruning back in February it grew pretty good. The third branch from the top on the left grew back nicely after cutting it back to a couple of inches. The first branch on the bottom right did not grow as fast as hoped but I will point it once again to the sun and with lots of new roots it should respond.
The leaves are all small this year as I did not allow a lot of larger summer growth leaves but kept summer growth pinched off. In another year or two of this I will see lots more back budding on the interior of the branches.
The trunk thickened nicely this year and must be due to the lower nitrogen, higher phosphorous and potassium fertilizer. Other smaller Flower God’s were successfully root pruned very hard this year and did survive.
Six new dwarf truncatum bonsai are started this year 2018. This is a Flower God, one of the 2 very first grafts that are made in 2014. It is cut back from 6 feet tall to 8 inches with 90 percent of the roots removed back in February and potted in a large bonsai pot.
In early June it is cut back hard again and most leaves are removed, and today, July 20, 2018, it is in the middle of a big Texas heat wave , (110 degrees fahrenheit, 43 celsius). It gets sun until noon every day, then dappled. My yard has spots with 8 hours sun, to all dappled, and that gives me lots of options. Next year the branches will be selected and wired into place.
The intense heat has slowed down the growth but so far it shows no signs of heat related stress from high temperature reduced photosynthesis.
‘The Blob’, the lone surviving 2012 dwarf seedling from 40 that were found, completely left to grow on its own for 7 years without pruning, and shown for the first time anywhere.
With a natural crooked trunk, good bark, and many spaghetti-like branches, it would make a good bonsai. Sometimes it’s best to just let dragons be dragons but I just might start another bonsai.
The leaf is different from the other dwarfs and may not have been a seed from a Fire Dragon as I did not keep records on that back then. It is about 3 feet tall from its base. It has never lost a branch from shading itself or any other reason. I rotate the pot 180 degrees every 2 weeks. It has never been propagated.
Early June 2018 and Pure Fun dwarf Shantung maple is pruned of most of its leaves. It is a 4 year old graft and in its first year in a bonsai pot. It grew out well with several new buds and lots of large leaves. Now the leaves are removed to encourage even more new buds and to begin the process of branch development. The leaf petioles are left on and will be pushed off when the new growth appears in 7 to 10 days. Then a lot of the growth will be pinched back to the first set of two leaves.
This procedure is not recommended for most newly potted maples but it appeared to recover from the severe root pruning when I saw the new red growth coming out in late May, and the named dwarf Shantung are very good survivors with much vigor.
Baby Dragon TM first time in a bonsai pot at age 7. The roots were much better than expected so it could have gone into a smaller pot and it may in a couple more years. This was in the ground for 4 years and that usually makes a bad root system for bonsai. Now the very porous bonsai soil has a layer of spaghnum moss on top to help produce the nice shallow root system that fuses together over time and will be slowly exposed. This is called the ‘nebari’ in Japan and some consider it the most important aspect of a good bonsai.
At this point the second trunk chop needs to heal and I am finally starting to work on the branches. The bark is awesome for a maple. The leaves are a little large right now after the severe pruning sending out a lot of energy to a few leaves.
‘Sweet Spot’ Shandong maple is awesome on November 30, 2017 when I visit Metro Maples. 15 feet tall and wide after 20 years. Unfortunately the spots do not appear on grafted trees. Collected some Fire Dragon seeds too.
Dwarf Acer truncatum ‘Baby Dragon’ TM Shandong, or Shantung maple is making an excellent cascade bonsai. Eight years old here on November 11, 2017. It colored up early this year. It does take some effort to get the lower branches to grow as the top gets more sun. Keep the top branches from growing by pruning and it will work out just fine. Use bonsai wire to shape the branches where you want them. It is a vigorous dwarf.
Mother ‘Fire Dragon’ on November 30, 2017 at Metro Maples. Around 33 feet tall. The caliper at 1 foot above ground is over 13 inches now. A seedling in 1999, the red is noticed right away among hundreds of other yellow Shantung maples. First grafts in 2002 and sales began in 2006 after the patent approval and with thousands already in inventory.
Flower God dwarf Shantung in bonsai training. Fall, first leaves in spring , summer, and a mock up of the final goal.
Mother Fire Dragon TM at Metro Maples on September 16, 2017. Trunk is over 13 inches in diameter now.
Wow. Flower God dwarf, the miracle tree, in bonsai training with new pink growth on June 16, 2017.
Super Dragon TM on May 8th at Metro Maples showing it’s natural fountain shape and leaf color.
A 5 year Baby Dragon with no pruning, a spreading and slightly weeping from dense leaves growing on thin branches.
A dwarf Shandong in 2017 named Pure Fun. 5 years old, 1 1/2” caliper trunk. This shape resembles Fire Dragon so I plan on turning it into a bonsai.
One retirement plan is to create dwarf Shandong bonsai. TARP Dragon, Happy Dragon, Pure Fun, and Fairy Dragon. These are all original trees.
A good maple trunk for bonsai is a tapered trunk. Maples will have trunks with the thickness about the same from bottom to top unless it goes through a period of trunk chopping. This Baby Dragon was started in year 2010 and grown in the ground until November 2015 when it had a 4-5” base at the soil line and then chopped and potted in this large growing pot. The middle left trunk, where you see some grey cut paste, is almost healed up 2 years later but on July 8, 2017 I noticed the new top was getting too large and about to lose the taper so I decide I must make the second trunk chop. Behind you see the 6 foot of tree that was cut off. It isn’t the best time to do this but it is a Baby Dragon and they will do most anything you tell them to do. Early June or February are better times to trunk chop. Japanese bonsai masters don’t like maples trunk chopped as it leaves a tiny scar but with truncatum’s thicker bark that may not be the case.
Retirement from Metro Maples , Dec. 31, 2015 and home for good. Time to rethink my life and goals. I bring home 225 small trees in an effort to finish some Shantung maple testing, to try and get some 3rd generation seeds, to create or refine some Shantung maple bonsai, to introduce the bonsai world to dwarf Shantung, and to make my backyard full of maples with awesome beauty to show my treasures to all. Above are brought home to this sunny area called The Dragon Lair. In retirement, it should be no less adventurous and thrilling than before.
Late 2015 with record rainfall for the year, and my work at Metro Maples is almost over. I plan to retire and sell the farm to Scott Hubble and it couldn’t be in more capable hands as he is a very accomplished expert after 9 years of maple farming. I grew over 33,000 Shantung maples. I even had a dream of my original Fire Dragon at 250 years old and complete with elves that were bricking up a hollow trunk on the back side. The photo shows the larger Fire Dragon now in all sizes, a mid-size growing FIYA Dragon, and a dwarf Flower God. Here is a listing of other worthy Shantung maples I have named in case anyone ever wants to grow them: Baby Dragon and Super Dragon patented trees, Gate Dragon, the columnar Doric Dragon, Golden Dragon, Skinny Dragon, King of the Shandong, Blaine’s Dragon, Hubble’s Dragon, Sweet Spot, Dizzy Dragon, Bride of Dragon, Deplorable Dragon, Son of Dragon, Happy Dragon, The Blob, Micro Dragon, Nano Dragon, TARP Dragon, Green Dragon, The 2nd Coming, Pure Fun, Fairy Dragon, White Dragon, Dancing Dragon, FDBD#8, Eye of the Dragon, Witches Dragon, Orange Dragon, Neglected Dragon, FDBD2015#1, FDBD2015#2, and Sugar Dragon. 36 beautiful survivors.
February 2015 and the unknown is revealed. First flowers on a dwarf Shantung maple and they are very small. Peter Gregory calls them the smallest maple flowers he has seen. I think they are gorgeous flowers too. These occurred on a high graft Baby Dragon that is grafted two years earlier on a dozen branches on a 10 gallon seedling Shantung. I did not know if the dwarfs would ever bloom or what they would look like and am completely overwhelmed with the flowers. Now if only I can get some seeds and get some 3rd generation maples. The US Patent Office is finally reviewing my patent application that is filed a year and a half ago, but I do get to add the flower descriptions. The patent is approved after 2 years from the filing date.
Flower God dwarf Shandong maple in December 2014. It has great potential for garden and bonsai use. Dense hard yet flexible wood, small leaves, great bark, small flowers, hardy, heat tolerant and vigorous. I believe that heat stress is a factor in producing the many new dwarfs, along with inbreeding. After the many years of struggling to grow hundreds of thousands of maples in containers in all kinds of harsh weather, I’ve come to realize, and you can quote me on this, that “you may not like it or you may not understand it, but the weather is always perfect.”
Blooms on Fire Dragon TM at Metro Maples, early spring before the leaves in 2014.
Super Dragon TM growing at Metro Maples in May 2013. It maintains bright yellow leaves all year.
Fire Dragon at Metro Maples in a 300 gallon container in 2013.
My good friend, Rene Rodgers, doesn’t even looked tired after helping Scott and I unload 20 tons of maples in March 2013. His Fire Dragon is a very nice red in the alkaline clay in Mansfield, Texas on December 12, 2016.
Oregon grown Fire Dragon TM at Munn’s Nursery, Brooks, OR. It sells fast even among his 55 acres of Japanese maples.
November 18, 2013 and both ‘Fire Dragon’ TM and a yellow fall Shantung called ‘Gate Dragon' are spectacular. Gate Dragon is picked out from other 15 gallon seedlings with a superior shape without pruning, strongest vigor, and fall color.
Super Dragon Shantung on November 23, 2012 showing it’s true fall colors which is rare in Texas due to the hot fall temperatures. Here it usually gets a little greener in early fall then turns a pastel yellow. All the leaves were removed in summer and the new leaves show fall color better than you’ll ever get. This year a reverse osmosis water purification system is installed and the major water issues are fixed.
Victory from the Summer From Hell and very few casualties, plus 2 more United States Plant Patent filed, so I promote myself to a 3 Star Maple General. I sometimes think I’m General Patton reincarnated and have his big ego to prove it. All my life I’ve been determined to succeed at whatever I do but in my everyday mind my love and addiction to plants is all I see. At Metro Maples this guy really believes “it’s all about the trees”. Ask anyone, I don’t even to try to sell them as I’d just as well keep them. I grow them all like they are going in my garden and price them where I don’t care if you buy them or not. Business is good but decide to keep the farm small.
Robert Hafkesbring owns Designs In Nature (now named The Tree Place), with a large tree inventory and delivers and plants more of them than anybody in the Dallas Metroplex. A good friend and business partner that loves my trees and buys every named Shantung maple I have for his beautiful new garden. He motivates Tree Town USA into growing Fire Dragon. Left is a 2 year old Eye of the Dragon dwarf growing like a weed in the worst clay possible. On the right we are in front of a favorite Shantung of his while I bring him yet another maple for his yard.
A miracle in early 2012. One of my top ten favorite new dwarfs is lifted February 17th after only 23 days as a hardwood cutting. Lots of roots and even 6 new leaves. None of the 5 scions off the mother plant are successful grafts and a few weeks later the mother plant is dead. So this is the only surviving piece. This cutting grows nearly 3 feet its first year. I’ve never seen anything like this. I give it the best name I can think of, Flower God. Cecil Briley used to call me Flower God and there is a supreme flowering Japanese azalea I love is named Shinsen, and that translates into Flower God. So after naming 25 trees I name this one after my nickname.
About 40 of the ‘Fire Dragon’ dwarfs die in 2011 from the record heat and/or phytotoxic spider mite spray and genetic deficiencies. The remaining have a truly glorious fall color display that lasted into the next year. I still have 60 to test and eventually name. It takes extraordinary techniques to graft these dwarfs with extremely thin branches. That’s a 2 year old branch shown above and it’s still thin and older wood doesn’t graft well. None of the 2012 dwarf Shantung grafts take.
Fire Dragon at the end of the hottest year on record in north Texas, year 2011. This colored up in the hot, completely dry sand without any irrigation. Notice the dead eleven year old juniper. All the Eastern red cedars and honey locust die this year. The trees are also attacked literally by a million spider mites that came out of the dry forest. Good water wells are mostly dry, producing only about 1,000 gallons per day. Three separate fires erupt nearby in August and the old house to the east, just across the street, is burnt down. A large fire came within 200 feet on the north. Scott and I went back out there about 6 pm and connected 700 feet of hoses to help the volunteer Fire Department to put out the blaze. Average highs were 103.7 degrees with 79 days over a hundred. Despite all these enemies it is the greatest victory for the Shandong and Japanese maples as they fight and survive what Jimmy Turner of the Dallas Arboretum calls The Summer From Hell.
A fall garden of Mother Fire Dragon TM and a 2003 graft leaning out over the koi pond in year 2010. A whole book could be written about water issues at Metro Maples. The good shallows wells are producing very little for 8 years now and 4 attempts at finding new water all ended in dry holes. The local coop water is expensive and so loaded with sodium and lime it kills Japanese maples and stunts and burns Shantung maples. I drilled my own deep well but it was not much better. Through a strategy of mixing wells, hand watering, and monitoring with a salt meter I somehow learn to survive the yearly droughts and record heat using only 4,000 gallons per day for 18,000 trees, many of which are large 10 gallon to 25 gallon size. I pray and cuss often but the only message I ever receive is ‘Keith, keep going, you’re the only one that can do this.” This also lead me into an in-depth study of plant nutrients and this knowledge with my water management skills would prepare me for the future.
In 2010 with ‘Baby Dragon’ already in production about 100 new dwarf Shantung seedlings are discovered. This time the parent is ‘Fire Dragon’ and the new dwarfs inherited their mother’s fall color and came in at least 5 different growth habits. I am resolved to study the mystery of the new dwarf Shantung maples.
Rare Texas fog in spring 2009 in the garden that is started in 2004 and now full of maples, including mother ‘Fire Dragon’ TM in the top center with a Yasemin below. There’s also a Crimson Queen, Paperbark maple, Shindeshojo and Aratama Japanese maples in with my Japanese azalea collection. Scott and I are challenged keeping up with the demands of growing and selling our increasingly popular trees as the financial collapse in 2008 didn’t slow us down. We still deal wholesale and retail and are bringing in specimens from Oregon, bare root from New Zealand, and grafting 5,000 of our own each year. There are over 18,000 maples and azaleas in production in hundreds of varieties. I grew many different species from natives to ground covers to azaleas from the beginning but in 2008 it changes to all maples.
The men behind the maples, Keith Johansson (left), and Scott Hubble with a couple hundred Fire Dragon dug in August 2008 which are rooted out and ready to sell in two months. I thought digging in the Texas heat but it worked great. A huge 70 mph hail storm in April tore up a lot of the long soft growth from the previous greatest growing year ever. Hundreds of hours are used fighting a gas pipeline but won a rare victory and kept them off my property. Customers drive hundreds of miles to come for Fire Dragons and once sold 65 large ones on a single Saturday retail in fall. Scott is a good worker and every customer loves him.
‘Fire Dragon’ showing the most red of any tree I have ever seen. It was a great warm and rainy year, 2007. 2004 was also a good growing year. The other years were all hot and dry and the trend seemed to peak in year 2011 in what looks like a 30 year cycle with other hot periods in Texas in the 1930’s, 1950’s, 1980’s, and 2000’s. Ginkgo Autumn Gold reached peak color the following day. This setup was made for yet another front page story in The Living Section of the newspaper.
The maple knoll in 2007 had the most beautiful Shantung ever grown. It took an extra year or two compared to other growers that pump them up with too much nitrogen and water. Ours are pruned with thoughtfully spaced branches and stakes are not used so the trunks are stronger. The roots are in the perfect sized pot for the size of the tree. It is one of the most fun times as Scott and I drive down every week and pick up more and more good looking Fire Dragon for several years and haul them to the Shandong sales area. Eventually the demand would outpace us and we would run out of inventory so prices go up.
In 2007 I join The Maple Society and go to the Morris Arboretum and find this 100 year old Shantung maple. That’s Dr. Richard Olsen who works at the US Department of Agriculture. The USDA is doing research on Shantung maple with a goal of introducing trees but the program is dropped in 2016. I ask him why they ended the program and he tells me it is because they have me doing it. He has 2 Fire Dragon planted at the US National Arboretum. I met many other knowledgeable people in the Maple Society like Peter Gregory, Hugh Agnus, Talon Buchholz, Tim and Matt Nichols, Todd Laseigne, Keith Warren, Sue Weigreif, Jim Schmidt, Frank Byles and Cor van Gelderon and many more. In 2008 I want to go to Japan and ask my wife but she doesn’t want to go. I must go. I sign up myself and get in big trouble and have to sleep on the couch for 6 months, but I must go. Other Maple Society meetings take me to Holland, Westonbirt Arboretum, northern France, Atlanta, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, DC, and North Carolina.
My very good gardening friend, Sue Mohr, Clinton, Arkansas, received one of the first Fire Dragon in the fall of 2006. We are in the Ozark Chapter of The American Rhododendron Society and she taught me a lot about plants. The photo on the right is Fire Dragon in June of the following year showing zero damage after a tremendous late freeze that damaged trees from Oklahoma to North Carolina. The freeze destroys 3 years of native and ornamental tree growth but Fire Dragon even in full leaf is undamaged. The ultimate hardiness test. You fall in love with trees and people like this.
High nitrogen fertilizer for Baby Dragon TM with warm temperatures makes for very bright color new growth.
Baby Dragon sits around for years in the shade for ease of maintenance but once the grafted clones are put out into the full sun with some July rain like in 2010, the striking new pink growth became quite apparent and I decide to propagate many more. I hurried up the long hill to get Scott and Rene to see this.
Besides propagating a lot of Fire Dragon in 2007 a little plant discovered in 2005 and is first called Dwarf Golden Dragon is getting attention. Shown above in spring 2007 compared to the famous Golden Fullmoon Maple, A. shirawsawanum ‘Aureum’. Dwarf Golden Dragon later becomes the patented Super Dragon TM.
In early 2005 the 15 foot high mound named the Maple Knoll is created with a bulldozer with top soil from a pond that is dug. It is a pot in pot system that holds 400 15 gallon Fire Dragons. Also early that year I hear the space shuttle Challenger explode in the sky. Roy Gallegos, right, is a great volunteer Saturday salesman and also helps during a week in May when we install 4,000 spitters in this area to grow Shantung maples. Spitters are similar to a drip system but spitters spray out water over the entire soil surface. 2005 was the start of what I call the Maple Wars because demand was rising 20% every year all across the country and growers of Japanese maples had not been propagating enough so they totally ran out of red Japanese maples. I had several offers to sell my entire stock but turned them all down to keep a supply on hand for my loyal customers. The year was extremely busy with retail and wholesale customers and teaching clarinet lessons. Also a huge drought where even cotton would not grow, forced me do a lot of hand watering to save water as the shallow wells were running dry and new drilling produced only dry holes. The sand, just below the surface, on the Maple Knoll in summer is 145 degrees. Temperatures halfway down on the inside of the black plastic pots is 125 degrees. I am all alone as the bugs and ants all stay underground and the mosquitos have no rain to reproduce. A total of 15,000 trees were repotted which helped to save water and satisfy the growing demand.
Fire Dragon in year 2004 is planted and a fenced garden is started. It is not as big as it could be because in 2002 and 2003 I cut off every twig for propagating new ones which slows down the growth. All the twigs I could graft in 2002 is 65 trees. In 2003 it was 400 trees but after that it is 1,000 trees or as many as I want. Incredibly fast start. Fall color was orangish-red that year but very bright. Texas A&M University announces Shantung as one of only two trees as a Texas Superstar. Of course I sell out quickly of seedling Shantung as I am the only one I know growing them.
It is an on the job learning experience with nobody to talk to in Texas about growing maples. All the nurseries thought I was joking when I tell them I’m growing Japanese and Shantung maples wholesale in Texas. I did find a good friend and passionate maple farmer in Brooks, Oregon, Carl Munn (left) that had 55 acres of maples and had started ten years before me. Sometimes we could find a moment to chat over the phone where I could pick up some grafting or growing tips and we shared stories and laughed at our difficult problems. Even as difficult as maple farming can be neither of us would be happier doing anything else.
Fire Dragon is born in 1999 the same year my mother, Dorothy Manning Johansson passed away. My mom had a rare, one acre Asian style garden with maples, azaleas, dogwoods, peonies, pines, etc. and an asian decorated house in Bartlesville, Oklahoma where I grew up. Her 1998, and last Christmas present to me is this precious stone bonsai, shown above. Notice the truncated base and leaf shape and color compared to a spring Fire Dragon. The bible I inherited dates back to the Civil War and also contains our family tree history. The first time I open it and the first line I read is “Praise the Lord and the Trees Will Sing”. I couldn’t believe that message jumped out at me at random on the first opening and began to believe that somehow my Mom is an angel behind my tree. I also once heard my name called out from the vicinity of Fire Dragon and turned around and answered “What?”, but there is no one there. I search the grounds but never find anyone. Is it the voice of God and what other trees would He lead me too?
June 2004 and Fire Dragon first grafts from 2002. The property is a dense mature oak forest with green briar and poison ivy everywhere. I estimate I cut 400 miles of briar by hand. Expenses are kept low meaning lots of back breaking long hours of work. These and thousands of plants are hand-watered for several years before irrigation could be installed. The only machine is a chainsaw, and is combined with shovels, wheelbarrows, and pruners. The work week is everyday and no time off for vacation or sickness, and no time for deliveries. If you want to buy my maples wholesale or retail, you had to come get them yourself. I feel like a slacker after only working 360 days that year.
One of my favorite pictures is taken in the fall of 2001 and compares fall color on my Fire Dragon with the old standard Japanese maple, Bloodgood. Fire Dragon’s leaf is thicker than Bloodgood so the leaf does not glow the same, but the color is much more true red. This is the third straight year of red so I know that it is consistent in its red fall color and I make plans to begin propagation of the tree.
Welcome to the Shandong maple blog. I’d like to start with the first picture of the first Shandong maple cultivar, ’Fire Dragon’ TM, taken way back in the fall of 2001 at Metro Maples, Fort Worth, Texas. I also referred to Fire Dragon as “The Tree of the Millennium”. It is thrilling to find this special tree and it changed my life forever. Metro Maples began in 1994 by me, Keith Johansson, an amateur gardener/plant collector and 40 years old but stronger than I’ve ever been, and a victim of corporate downsizing from a large oil company merger. It is located just outside Kennedale and Fort Worth, Texas on the far western edge of the great American Eastern forest. I also teach private clarinet music lessons as a source of income to pay off the loan on the land. My first web site was built by me in year 2001 in the very early beginnings of the world wide web. Also in 2001 retail customers are allowed after the first of many full page stories about Metro Maples appearing in both the Fort Worth and Dallas newspapers that brought in a potential of 6,000,000 new customers. Everything is eerily quiet on 9/11 as I watch the twin towers destroyed on TV in my neighbor’s house of Jim and Emily Tripp. They are the best neighbors ever and once owed a hardware store in Arkansas and gives freely of his knowledge and every kind of power tool. Jim helped build the well house, garden fence, and the greenhouse and is always there as a friend and to help out. I never would have had this land if not for him preventing the sand pits from crossing his land to dig out the sand that becomes Metro Maples. He always thought I needed a truck and a bobcat but I had to keep expenses low and used my SAAB 9000 as a truck and unload the heavy B&B maples, many of them 200 to 300 pounds, off the 18 wheelers with my bare hands. Fortunately, I never hurt my back or the trees.
It took 2 years to find 6 acres that is close to home and affordable. I found some land in Kennedale but the city regulations are costly and do not even apply to a wholesale tree grower. The land I found is just outside the town in an unincorporated area and is on the market for 20 years in an estate and never sold because you couldn’t even walk in it. It is the densest forest I’ve ever seen where you could not even see further than 15 feet. The land is covered with mature oaks with tens of thousands of sweet briar vines clinging all the way to the top, and mature poison ivy and in some areas the stoleniferous Cornus drummondii. It is the perfect environment for these plants with no competition in the hot and bone dry sugar sand that once was an ancient sea bed. I cut tons of briar with my Felco pruners and pull it down wearing long sleeves even in summer to minimize the painful scratches I got every day. It took 2 years to clear the front land for room to grow several thousand maples. In 2000 it is the start of really hot dry summers in Texas. The photo top left is an old wagon trail that went from Cleburn to Fort Worth and shows the oaks in August with all brown leaves after 110 days without a drop of rain. A patch of 20 foot tall mature staghorn sumac dies along with some yucca. I give a talk on the new global warming science to the Rhododendron Society. The photo on the right is a Shantung several years after it sat in a 5 gallon pot through the whole summer and lived without any water. I never find any other plant or tree, oak to cedar elm, than can survive in a pot in Texas without water so I name this one Neglected Dragon. I root some Japanese maples this year for a love of bonsai but don’t consider any Shantung maples as their leaves are too large.
I feel like an Okie from John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath leaving Oklahoma in late 1989. A finance major graduate of Tulsa University and a former financial planning and budget analyst at Cities Service Oil and Gas I cannot find suitable employment so a detailed plan is made for starting a maple farm using my talent for growing plants. The plan shows thousands of trees in inventory as it takes 3 to 5 years to grow a nice one, and it shows that it would be many years before reaching profitability. Possibly the hardest thing I ever did is to pick up the phone to get started and order 1,000 Japanese maple small grafts, 200 Shantung maples, 200 red Japanese maple seedlings from Oregon, and 300 large bare-root Japanese maples from New Zealand. Something inside me is telling me to make the phone call while my common sense keeps reminding me that the work is hard and the profits are low. I have the Japanese Maples book by Vertrees and a Fireglow that I bought in Oklahoma that is more red all year than others, but not a whole lot of knowledge about running a maple tree farm. I do know there are not many maples available to buy in north Texas, usually just Bloodgood, and there are so many good ones that are fairly easy to grow in the Texas shade. These maples give a whole new taller layer to the average shade garden. My first 2 years in Texas in 1990 and 1991 it never hit 100 degrees and summer rain is good so my rhododendrons collection is doing well, so it seemed at the time that the climate was nice down here in Texas. The first batch of Shantung maples contained a weird small leaf tree that took me a couple years to realize it was some kind of genetic dwarf. It would sit around for more another 10 years before I realized its potential and name it Baby Dragon. The maple shown above was also found early on with special fall colors a consistent yellow with red spots so I plant it in the ground to keep it also.
This Shantung maple blog is dedicated to: (Top Row Left to Right) - My Mom who is the brains behind the awesome asian garden where I grew up and getting me a job at Tom Ward’s nursery during junior and high school and the best cook in Oklahoma so I grew to 6’4” tall. My Dad who gave me my courage and strength. The Ozark Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society that cemented my love of plants, especially Sue Mohr, Leonard Millar, Nellie McEntire, Dr. John Thornton, Buddy Lee, Larry Coleman, Scott Weddington, and Dr. John C. Pair, horticulturist at Kansas State that suggested that I grow Shantung when I was just starting the farm. (Bottom Row) - My wife, Jeri Bisel and daughter Blaine that allowed me to start the farm. Frank Pronio, my clarinet teacher for 6 years that taught me discipline and that hard work pays off and a system for success. And Sparky, our Cairn terrier that chewed off both lower branches of a small Bloodgood that I picked up and rooted, thus giving me the idea to start a maple tree farm.
