Hi everyone, When you graft any varigated maple do you have to make sure that the scion was from a varigated part of your plant? The reason I am asking that is that I grafted two Toyama Nishikis last year. The mother plant has one branch which does not show any varigation. One of my new plants came out plain the other beautifuly varigated. I wonder if the varigation can come through after some years or if I a ended up with a "non nishiki Toyama". regards Webwolf
Actually, Toyama nishiki is the variegated form of the older Toyama Maple. The nishiki in this case refers to the fact that the variegated form is a more compact (shorter in length stems from node to node), growing tree than Toyama is. Most of the Toyama nishiki sold in nurseries are actually Dissectum variegatum, so we have had a problem of which Maple is which for a number of years (since the mid to late 70's from photos and earlier in collections). It is considered prudent to take wood from a known variegated branch if we want to propagate a variegated tree via grafting. In some cases the non variegated growth can come back and show some variegation but generally seeing variegated growth come back from non variegated budwood or scionwood does not happen with enough regularity to "bank" on it happening. The standard deviation of a plus or minus 5% does come into play here in that of 100 grafts from non variegated wood from a variegated tree can yield 5 grafted offspring that may be variegated. Of course that percentage goes way up by taking wood that is variegated. Then again I like the red leaved Toyama Maple a lot, so making a new plant that shows some of the traits of the old Toyama Maple would interest me (had one years ago on its own roots and wish I had it again) as a collection plant. I've seen grafted Beni shidare variegated and Beni shidare tricolor not show any variegation for about 12-15 years with in ground plants and then saw some of these trees become variegated, so it is possible to see some variegation come back from non variegated trees. The main drawback is that those trees that did show some variegation after years of not being variegated were quite sparse in which branches did have some variegated leaves however. In other words do no expect the tree to have allover variegation. Welcome back webwolf. We need to know how things are going for you guys with Maples in Australia. Jim
