The Shandong Blog

October, 2024 - Early fall color this year from 4 very cold nights in the middle of September and lots of rain all month and into October.  Most maples had various orange color this fall, even on my ‘Fire Dragon’.  This ‘Flower God’, above, did turn a beautiful red.  ‘Dark Dragon’ test plant also turned a good red.  ‘Flower God’ performed well all year and is successful in enabling several new branches to grow from just 1 inch long to a foot and a half in the middle of the design.   Also interesting is that the leaves of ‘Dark Dragon’ hung straight down from May into June before it is cured of phytophora root rot.  Metro Maples is now in its 30th year, thanks to Scott Hubble!

Yet to be named this 3rd generation ‘Fire Dragon’ 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 most all, it is in the orange range.

November 2023 update.  Testing began on Fire Dragon tissue culture propagation that could lead to a much bigger market.  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.  A lot of my trees lost some good fall color after that.  Those below were either protected or colored up before the storms.  The dwarf Shantung maples here are in their first year of branch training so are very bushy now.  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.

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.  Usually the hard part is getting them back out into fresh air but these, with their good root systems, are easy.  Success rate is 100% on Flower God and 83% on Happy Dragon.  Two new shoots grew on all and after 2 months some were 8 inches long.

Late summer 2022 in Tuscany, Italy with a new Shantung maple.  Above is 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.  Years ago someone ask what I hoped for in a new seedling, and my answer was a dark or black leaf.  Is it luck or is there an information source used to create matter coming from a hologram or a God?  I believe the latter.

This maple is slow but it is not uncommon for some dwarf Shantung seedlings to take 2 years to get growing good.  It is common for most of them to perish and 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.  This also adds phosphorus to promote flowers which will have to bloom on my older bonsai as the Fire Dragon and Baby Dragons are and still very young.

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 in boxes or hidden in my suitcase and are loving their new climate.  

Above:  Top left - Deplorable Dragon is defoliated and put in my suitcase and is shown 2 weeks after arriving with all new leaves and is showing off our view of Tuscany.  Top right - The big Baby Dragon trunk upon arrival was shipped in February and repotted and cared for until my arrival.  2nd row - Overview of some of the plants that made the trip.  

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.

 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.  I learned all seeds from a dwarf Shantung are even smaller dwarfs, and all are going to be too slow growing.  This spring is the coolest and longest I can remember in north Texas and the new dwarfs got everything to help them grow.   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.  It and the thousands of clones and seedlings will be around for many years to come.

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.’

Many plants died in north Texas from the cold.  Across the street is a 40 foot pine dead.  I lost a couple of Japanese maples in pots and several azaleas, gardenias, witch hazel and bamboo.  Both my native Texas Sage with 6 years bonsai training also died.  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 discussion with the bureaucrats in Italy and the USA have stalled.  There will not be any authorized import of my historical trees.  (1)  the USDA must follow their rules but their rules are mistakenly written differently than those in Italy so a stalemate exist.  Neither side has any incentive to help and nothing to gain by helping, (2) the rules are written for commercial purposes and not in line with an individual, (3) the exception for scientific purposes I applied for is used to move harmful organism around for study, exactly opposite the intent of import restrictions, and does not apply for importing harmless tress.  I have other plants I work with, like azaleas (bottom left photo) and they will be allowed after repotting and 3 months of inspections.

Top left, the Dragon Lair is home to many Japanese maples also, like this Deshojo I have grown for twenty years.

Top center - Eye of the Dragon fall color at a friend’s house.

Top right - Not that much cold in north Texas so a few Flower God blooms and leaves emerge in January.

Center right - Flower God seedling #2 fall color

Bottom right - After keeping the Flower God seedlings that germinated in October warm through December and allowed to grow, cold is introduced to stop growth a little before spring.  Flower God seedling #1 with a Metro Maples pen for scale.

It’s too early to know fall colors on the new seedlings that germinated in October, but wouldn’t it be fate if they are a consistent orange because when I started 40 years ago I always searched out orange flowers and looked for orange fall color maples which is a hard color to get in the Texas climate.

1/3/21 - Pure Fun dwarf Shantung maple 3 years after initial prune for bonsai use, shown in the bright winter sun.

November 2020 - Early fall colors from 5 very cold days 2 weeks ago.  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 that is growing well and heeling up the trunk chop wounds rapidly.  I’m slowing the growth on the lower branches by pinching.

Baby Dragon Shantung maple in winter and early spring 2020.  It was repotted and the trunk in now leaning more which gives it a more dramatic appearance, especially from the side views.  After a 2 year test it is confirmed that akadama produces better roots compared to sized and sifted pine bark.  This is mainly due to its round shape which promotes better drainage compared to the flat bark pieces which can either act like shingles or hold too much water between horizontal pieces.

Left, the big ‘Baby Dragon’ tapering trunk in early March 2020 is growing several weeks early while temperatures are still cool.  The cool weather slows the growth and makes early leaf colors better.  Close-up on bottom right.  Top center is a ‘Flower God’ dwarf Shantung bloom.  There are many dwarf Shantung blooming this year from restricting growth in small containers and from low nitrogen fertilizer.  It’s the first time for a bloom on a ‘Pure Fun’ dwarf.  Top right is the 2015 dwarf ‘Deplorable Dragon’.

Out of all the exciting Shantung memories this first seedling in February 2020 from one of my dwarf creations , is the most exciting.  Fire Dragon in 1999 and the 2010 dwarfs were chance finds while this one is planned a long time, and while I’ve had seeds previously from Baby Dragon, none germinated.  The first to emerge have very tiny leaves (shown with index finger) and other later growing seeds have medium size leaves.  These seedlings are selfed or from hand pollination with A. pictum ‘Usugumo’ , Batwing maple.  The 3/8 inch leaves (photo right) are the first leaves and in front of a silver dollar. 

Other early developments in 2020 are more blooms coming on dwarfs Flower God and Baby Dragon and even the first blooms for a Pure Fun dwarf.  Ten air-layers are coming on for bonsai use.  Grafts on TARP Dragon bonsai and a root graft on Flower God bonsai are also coming on.

Fall color in north Texas is below average in 2019.  The main reasons are the warmest September on record followed by sudden cold that shocked the Shantung, and then two hard freezes in the low twenties.  The sudden cold hurries them into preparing for fall so less red pigments are produced.  The hard freezes shortens the length of fall color so that leaves fall off soon after or before all the chlorophyll is dissolved.  A gradual cool down with no hard freeze is ideal.  Flower God (left) did OK as all the leaves were removed in summer which produces a latter fall color which gave it time to make red pigment, and it was protected from the hard freeze in a garage.  Sugar Dragon (right), the variegated Shantung maple produced good fall color before the hard freeze.  Fall colors in these conditions are very variable.  Some trees did good while others didn’t do much at all, but it’s amazing that we had any color at all.  Top right, some Flower God color on one in the ground after hard freeze.

October 2019 and another brutal summer all through September in north Texas.  Many in containers show at least minor leaf damage from constant high temperatures, especially at night, which reduces root growth leading to burned leaves.   Flower God (above) is in very good condition because of a July total leaf removal and these leaves received a shorter duration of hot weather.  Both pictures were shot at the same time to show the differences in leaf colors due to the angle of the sun.  The left is backlit and gives a shiny green, while the right has the sun straight on which shows a lighter green and more red new growth color.  This tree is best looking down at it so some of my newer starts will be made shorter than this one at 34 inches.

Next year this is due for repotting but I’m creating a new potting rule.  It will leaf out still in its same small pot and then will be slipped into a larger wooden box for summer.  This will give me maximum spring and summer growth next year.

Late July 2019 and 10 days after leaf removal (motobadame) on dwarf Flower God amid a very rare and long lasting cold front in Texas.  Good timing on my part because all the leaves were removed before any mention of a cold front.  Motobadame can increase the ramification of the branches but can be risky in my hot climate.  Note that it needs less water now and until transpiration begins again.  The tree is only in its 8th year and while the trunk is not big as the old bonsai in Japan it must be even more fun to have your own tree, from a seedling of your own named seedling, Fire Dragon.  I’m trying to expand the boundaries of bonsai with this dwarf, and that’s probably the only way to have great success in the bonsai world.

May 28, 2019 and the dwarf dragons have now proved they like the akedama soil I first used last year, and also they can grow vigorously in a very small bonsai pot (6 x 2 inches deep).  This is Deplorable Dragon with small leaves, bright pinks, and light green changing to dark green leaves.  The Jack’s Tomato Food with a hit of calcium nitrate are also proven to be good.  Warm sunny weather and plenty of sun with daily early morning watering complete the technique.  In other words, get your dragon as healthy as possible and get a great looking tree in summer.

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.  At first it looked like this is going to be a perfect year for me and my trees until Happy Dragon stopped growing in early March and sat there with tiny leaves until its death in late April.  There is no sadder plant loss for me over the 35 years of growing as many plants as I could.  It is not totally gone as I have 2 grafts.  RIP Happy Dragon, last picture top right.  It could not have died from cold.  Two others small dwarfs also died and 3 lived.  The ones with a nice single layer of spagnum moss put on in early March perished while the 3 without moss are still alive.

Bottom right is a new amazing hardwood cutting of a branch from Baby Dragon cascade.  It was started early January and grew 8 leaves then after a month it started growing everywhere.  Bottom left is Deplorable Dragon at 4 years and doing well in a very small pot with a better than average trunk size for a dwarf Shantung that is pruned often and pot grown.

Left - First Super Dragon blooms in six years and only the second time to have any.  Right - Seeds are forming on Eye of the Dragon, early April 2019.  I hand pollenated these flowers to make sure to get seeds 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.  It’s in my blood to find all that I can.

January 2019 and the first ever flowers on a dwarf ‘Flower God’.  The flowers are small as expected, but not expected are the orange sepals.  Sepals are the sheaths that cover each flower and I have never seen anything but yellow on all other Shandong flowers.  A few are female flowers with the ovary too small to see clearly, but have the usual shortened stamens.  The ovary is orange, not the usual yellow.  These flowers are from a 4 year old graft which is a young age to bloom.  The unique color distinguishes it from all other Shandong flowers so the name “Flower God’ that it got six years ago is fitting, and amazing.  When these small trees have hundreds of small twigs loaded with tiny flowers it could be quite a break through for maple bonsai, plus these beautiful flowers are a step closer to getting a third generation ‘Fire Dragon’.  Among dark azalea leaves are new ’Flower God’ leaves emerging red below the flowers, (bottom left).

December, 2018 and planning the next moves on this Baby Dragon with a 3” trunk and a 6” root flare, or nebari.  It had a 2nd trunk chop back in early July and now it’s major decision making time.  First step is to study what you have and then make a plan drawing of where you want it to go (above).  To the top of the wire is 18” but the plan is to go to 25”.  The trunk and branches will all be tapered and not straight, so both will need cutting back several more times.  Finding the front and the branches to use now will avoid costly mistakes that could crop up several years down the road.  There are 29 branches to choose from on the lower trunk, below ‘A’ , and I plan on keeping 10, but chose wisely as ones cut off now will be very difficult to ever get back.  Wire will be used to get the branch angle I desire from the trunk and must be done now before they get any bigger and can’t be changed.  So with that all in mind, next you choose when to prune the remaining branches because you can do it in late winter or early summer, with pinching the whole time in between.  Letter ‘A’ is the new top growing to the left of the wired branch that will give movement to the trunk.  There are buds there on top and bottom.  The one on bottom is desired because the one on top will grow straight up but the one on bottom with the top bud removed will curve upwards toward the sun into a nice curving trunk.  The area at ‘A’ is small and there are dormant buds below so I will let it grow out, including branch ‘B’ and thicken until June when I will prune both plus the current top with wire on it.  This is also a better time to get those dormant buds to grow from a hard pruning.  The first branch, ‘C’, is small and straight so I will let it also grow out until pruning in June and select a curving bud also at that time.  It will be cut way back to the 2nd internode where the spacing is short.  After the first 2 internodes those long shoots always produce internode spacing that is too long for a great bonsai branch.  Branches are going to be thicker on the bottom and get gradually smaller as you go up the trunk so cutting the lower branches back that much to get good internode spacing and curves will undoubtedly slow everything down, but I’ve decided to get it all right, even if it takes a few more years.

November 24, 2018 and visiting a customer’s Fire Dragon and other Shantung maples.

Two months of record rainfall and two days of record low mid-October temperatures force many Shandong in pots into the early fall color in north Texas.  The ones in the ground with warmer roots are not so early.  Fall colors on this October 30, 2018 are not their best, especially the reds that need time to make the red pigments and dissolve the yellow pigment in their leaves.  Left - Baby Dragon cascade bonsai this year proved you can develop fine ramification with very fine branch tips by not letting it grow and with some leaf thinning and removal to reduce the energy on those branches.  I’ll show the detail once the leaves are gone.  Center - TARP Dragon typically has yellow fall color so is less affected by the early fall.  The top was shorted in spring but no new shoots emerged so it had to be shortened even further to create a whole new top.  Right - The original FIYA Dragon is a semi-dwarf red fall color cultivar but has an orange red color due to the leaves changing too early in the season.  Many maples in pots are now showing signs of summer stress on the leaf edges, which even though there were 5 days of intense 107 to 110 degree high temperatures the main culprit is high root temperatures.   High nitrogen levels combined with the heat is also a factor.

Baby Dragon dwarf Shantung maple, July 2018, and Super Dragon Shantung (right).   It would be hard to find a better grower than a Baby Dragon.  The new growth and fall colors are very nice too.  This is growing in a 45 gallon black plastic pot and even in this very hot year with 8 hours of full sun, it just keeps on growing.  It is 7 feet wide.  Recently, two large, nice lower branches are removed when I decide I do not have enough space long-term for them in my small full sun area.  With the low branches gone the umbrella top will grow even faster.   Earlier I discovered that most of the water is running down the sides of the pot, leaving the center bone dry.  I put a slow drip over several spots around the center of the pot and it started doing better.  Next year it will go into a 95 gallon.  I have seen first year grafts grow over 200 feet if you total up all the growth on all the branches.  This is one Shantung maple that I really wish to see when it is really big.

Beautiful bark of Flower God dwarf Shantung, left is the original tree and right is a similar size grafted clone.  One of the best attributes of this dwarf is the small detailed bark that is perfect for bonsai.  Everything is small on this true dwarf seedling from the size of the leaves, to the flowers, to the roots.  Flower God is, however, a very good grower.  The original is created in 2012 as an improbable hardwood cutting (see below).  Well over 200 subsequent attempts to recreate that event over the last 3 years are all unsuccessful leading one to believe that the original creation is indeed a miracle.  The graft (right) with a similar diameter trunk is half the age and due to the faster growth it has deeper fissured bark.

July4, 2018 and I’m pinching the top while leaving the lower branches to grow in order to keep a nice tapering trunk.  This Baby Dragon is a 7 1/2 year graft and still in the trunk development stage but could turn out to be my best as the tapered trunk is large.  There are 2 long branches right about half way up and just above the second trunk chop I made exactly one year ago today.  I no longer just let them grow out everywhere to heal the trunk chop wound because that also creates other problems that have to be corrected.  The goal is to keep the branches similar to these sizes to keep the energy down low and slowly cut the branches back over the next few years and then start making the final branches.  Creativity is a chaotic process.

May 1, 2018 and dwarf Shantung Flower God (left) and Happy Dragon are growing nice and slow in their new small pots, with very small leaves from a cold spring, root pruning, and reduced nitrogen fertilizer.  The NPK ratio I am using is 12-15-30 with half the nitrogen as nitrate and half ammonium.  Micro nutrients and a 1 percent calcium are included.  I use 1 tablespoon in 2 gallons of water and apply twice a month at this time of year.  Shantung maples like calcium for fast growth so I may need to add gypsum or calcium nitrate later, but for now the slow, steady growth is what I seek and allows the wires to stay on longer.  This fertilizer should also help with flower production, which will be awesome because of their very, very small yellow flower clusters, perfect for early bonsai shows.  I did call it Flower God after all.

March 20, 2018 - Dwarf Shandong Flower God and Baby Dragon early spring.  Things to do:  Pinch new growth back to the first 2 leaves.  When the growth resumes you will then get 2 branches.  If you want to slow down a branch then you can also remove some other leaves which also allows light in and down.  Growth needs to monitored frequently to balance or redirect the energy in the tree throughout the growing season.  The top and branches with lots of leaves will grow faster than the lower branches or ones with fewer leaves.  Let a branch grow out a foot or more and that will thicken that branch but watch that it doesn’t get too big.

February 2018 repotting.  Maples are usually shown without leaves in bonsai shows.  The really good ones are old.  Mine are young, no more than 8 years, but getting better every year.  Left - Seedling Shantung maples in a forest style with exposed roots.  Center - Baby Dragon dwarf cascade style after pruning.  A lot of the top was cut back hard.  Two branches on the middle right were removed.  The lower section was left mostly intact so it will strengthen.  Some of the those branches will be removed later and are called sacrifice branches.  Right - Wire is used to bend all the branches on this 3 year old Flower God.    You can also train branches by pruning.  There are 2 buds at every node.  Every other pair of buds either go up and down, or left and right.  The best prune would chose the direction you would like the branch to grow and chose that one bud and cut the other off with a slanted prune cut.  You should also remember that the amount of  light will very strongly affect how much and the direction a branch will grow.  This one is a garden bonsai which is bigger and will be planted into a decorative bowl pot in the future.  It also has some straight sacrifice branches on the bottom to help increase the size of the trunk down there.

February 2018 repotting.  Wiring the dwarf Shantung’s flexible wood on original Micro Dragon (left).  The mostly natural shape of the original Dancing Dragon born in the first batch of dwarfs in 2010 (center left).  The 2013 first graft of the first dwarf discovery shows no graft scar and has great bark and a shape just like mother Fire Dragon.  It is now in a bonsai pot and all the branches were removed to get new smaller ones (center right).  New ones like this 3 year old dwarf seedling that is not from Fire Dragon are put into the bonsai program.  Dizzy Dragon (right) got its name from falling off a table in its first year slowing its growth but it is a fast grower.  In this small pot it should slow down and the best bonsai long term are grown carefully and slowly.  Some of the trees are developing horrible large roots for bonsai and that is probably from my impatient use of excessive fertilizer, water, and Superthrive.

Dwarf Shandong graft of ‘Happy Dragon’ on December 3, 2017.  Metro Maples will propagate more of this for bonsai.  Grafts grow much faster than the original seedling but still not big for 3 years.  Later it will be air-layered for bonsai.

Close-up of ‘Happy Dragon’ dwarf Shandong maple graft on December 3, 2017.  Red as my coffee cup.  The normally thumbnail size leaves are larger on grafted ones, especially the summer growth leaves as shown.

 ‘Flower God’ dwarf Shandong maple on December 3, 2017.  This is a summer cutting left to grow with its own shape and is 3 1/2 years old.  It received 2 TBS Osmocote , some Calcium nitrate, and in summer a little gypsum and 20-20-20 all purpose.  This is protected from the one hard December freeze we had and then fall colors last a full month.

Original ‘Happy Dragon’ on November 15, 2017 at 8 years old.  I like what I see 50 years from now as a bonsai.

Some ‘Baby Dragon’ TM pictures from 2017 and is a nice cascade at 8 years.  Use the arrows to scroll thru.

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.

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 graft in July, spreading and slightly weeping from dense leaves growing on thin branches.

A dwarf Shandong in 2017 in bonsai training.  5 years old, 1 1/2” caliper trunk.  This shape resembles Fire Dragon.

One retirement plan is to create dwarf Shandong bonsai. TARP Dragon, Happy Dragon, Pure Fun, and Fairy Dragon.

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 some 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, Deplorable Dragon, Dizzy Dragon, Bride of Dragon, Son of Dragon, Happy Dragon, Dragnado, 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.

Oregon grown Fire Dragon TM at Munn’s Nursery, Brooks, OR.  It sells fast even among his 55 acres of Japanese maples.

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.  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.

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 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 me.

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.

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.   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, mostly large ones,  on a single Saturday retail in fall.  Scott is a good worker and every customer loves him.

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.

‘Baby Dragon’ has thumbnail sized leaves and can take all day Texas sun but is planted in a shady spot and ignored for many years.  This photo from June 2007 shows it at 14 years old.  Propagation began in year 2009 after 3 years of rapidly increasing Fire Dragon sales.

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 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.