Acer grandidentatum – Rocky Mountain Bigtooth Maple Bonsai – Colorado Rocky Mountain Bonsai

I like native trees from the Rocky Mountains especially from Colorado. I thought a native maple would be really great to have. One of the local nurseries has some Rocky Mountain Bigtooth Maples for sale. They were all single trunks and one of the them had some movement in the trunk. I went home and researched this species and went back the next day purchased it. I brought it home and cleaned it up and the forgot about it until the end of the growing season. I decided that the tree would winter outside under a growing bench and sunk into a gravel bunker. I chopped the tree back to fit under the growing bench. The leaves turned a beautiful peach color. All of the leaves were the same peach color and nothing else. The following spring the tree leafed out just fine and it was allowed to grow unchecked. I followed this pattern for several years and the tree was chopped back several time with no ill affects. I did find another really large Rocky Mountain Big Tooth maple at a different nursery. This tree was very expensive. It had a very large trunk that split into three large branches/trunks. I decided to wait and hope it was still there at the beginning of the end of year sales. Luck was with me and I got it for about 40% off. I brought her home and she spent the winter in the garage for the first two years. I chopped the tree way back in 2018 and hoped for the best. Cut paste was applied to the 3 large trunks that were left. Only 2 of the trunks back budded, the largest of the trunks died almost back to the main trunk. The tree was allowed to grow branches where ever it wanted. I decided to style the tree for the first time. The major problem was this large dead trunk right in front of the tree. I spent a couple of hours working on that dead branch, no power tools on this branch. Most of the branch was removed and a stump was left. I did carve a little on the ends of the other two branches. I chopped the top of the tree again and wired the branches. I then moved all of the branches into the proper locations or at least I hope I did. The branches were easy to move and did not crack. I started on the top of the tree and worked my way down to the bottom. I did trim back some of the longer branches to be more in scale with the other branches. I think this tree is going to be a really great tree in a few years. I hope the roots look good as you cannot see any surface roots at all. Trunk size is about the same as a beer can. The leaves are very similar to a Hedge maple. There are leaves of different sizes on this tree. Insects do not seem to bother this tree. Both of my trees have bloomed and produced seeds.

I highly recommend this maple for Bonsai.