this is my japanese maple.it is a coral bark and sango kaku means coral tower... i picked it up 2 years ago. it was snapped and i paid 10$ for it. it was growing well then again a wind storm snapped 3 more branches off.i decided to air layer it cuz the top was just a mess for bonsai purposes



i am keeping the large leader for the main trunk and hopefully the top will become nice shohin material

the cut



the bag



the wrap



hope this works

You must wrap the bag up as tightly as possible to help promote fine root growth. And in my experience it helps if you cover the bag in something dark so that it can heat up. I used black electrition tape. Just trying to help

You can expect to see most of the buds falling off, because the tree can't get nutrients anymore. Good luck! i hope it works

I love acers, looks like some good shohin material to me, good luck!

You can expect to see most of the buds falling off, because the tree can't get nutrients anymore

actually stripping the cambium layer does not cut off nutrients to the leaves it is the opposite.it cuts off nutrients to the roots.the leaves will continue to grow being fed from the heartwood ,but the sugars formed in the leaves will have no place to be stored so new roots will grow at the cut...hopefully

Does the cambium transport water from the roots to the leaves? Because Ive noticed on most of the airlayers that Ive done, new buds either die a bit or the branches die back.

nope the other way.the outer layer "cambium" transports from leaves to roots the next layer transports from roots to leaves. you may have cut too far in and damaged this layer cutting off the leaves food supply ...

by the way after a week the leaves are still growin' on this one so i did something right

Wow, i just learnt something interesting.. tnx. I didn't do bio at school. I must have cut a bit deep on some of my airlayers then. Its good to hear the leaves are still growing

well i checked on this today and no roots the top of the tree is alive and growing so i don't know what i did wrong the tree actually started repairing the ring i cut and has grown totally over in parts ??? the new growth looks like candle drippings its weird. i put rooting homone back on the trunk and wrapped it up again.i think i forgot to apply it when i did it originally. i don't think it is the problem tho technically it should root anyway the hormone just helps it out, maybe i didn't carve far enough into the trunk. if the addition of hormone doesnt work i'll have to wait till next year

the only reasons I can think of why it grew over are, either you didn't cut it deep enough or that the band of bark that was removed wasn't wide enough.. Why do we do it? haha plant propagation is such a crap shoot.