Trident Maple #11

Trident Maple #11 - This tree found the way to my garden very recently. It was developed over 16 years by Juerg Staehli from Switzerland. Juerg is a professional sculptor and as bonsai artist he is self taught. He does incredibly good and natural looking gems, mainly with broadleaved deciduous trees. His speciality is that he starts just about everything from seeds or cuttings and works for decades. Juerg is not exactly my student, but influenced by me and am by him. We are brothers in spirit.

Why would a man get rid of such a tree if he does not have to? Why would a man who has the most very good maples of anywhere add still another one to his collection=

Juerg, I believe, does  not consider this tree really 'his' bonsai because he did not start it from seed. He is mainly interested in the first third of the life of a bonsai.

I am more interested in the last third or the life of a bonsai. And I indeed have a couple dozen very good maples. Some trident maples in between which are very impressive, very voluminous as is the mainstream taste. A naturalistic trident maple bonsai one cannot find. They are not on the market. One would have to make it yourself. This takes decades. I do not have this time and so I am very happy that I got this tree from Joerg. I will care for it and try to even improve it. This looks like impossible at the moment. We'll see.