i would do nothing until it leafs out in spring ... and probably.. not even then ...

i cant tell what is graft.. and what is understock ... you PROBABLY have made the right choice.... there should be a leaf difference ...

with JMs... i would go a little zen ... and not worry about a perfectly straight trunk ....

just for the heck of it.. i would move the big tag down to the trunk ... laying on the ground.. for now ... so it doesnt scratch the branch in winter... the lower is tougher bark at this point ...

personally .. i dont prune off anything for 2 or 3 years... except for broken stuff ... perhaps you ought to give it a break from pruning.. since you did what you called.. a lot of root surgery .... just a branch or two.. on something this size can be 50% of the canopy ... and that does not encourage root mass development ...

every leaf is a food making machine.. to grow the roots.. to grow the tree ... if you keep cutting them off.. IMHO ... you are retarding the growth potential of the plant ...

ken

Ken, your 2 for 2 tonight! I agree with everything you said about the pruning. The reason I decided to do it, was because the branches were 100% dead, no buds, no chance at recovery... figured it was better to remove them while dormant, than to wait until spring/summer. The branch with the red X is most likely a goner, but I left it until the spring to see what happens. Also, at the base of that branch is where a nice healthy shoot is heading up. As you can see in the updated picture, the shoot is defiantly above the graft line (see red line), so no worries about it being under stock growth.

I'm cool with the Zen approach, I guess my main question is in terms of aesthetics...Should I let that shoot develop into a second trunk to sort of balance the look of the tree, or keep it to the main truck... I'm imagining it looking like I have outlined in white if I let that shoot do it's thing...

Thanks,
Shawn

I'm fairly sure I'd eventually remove that entire branch. If, from looking at it in person, I was 100% sure it should go, then I would go ahead and remove it before growth begins in spring. However, if I wasn't completely sure, I'd remove the dead part (with a proper reduction-type cut) and make a final decision about the rest of the branch within the next couple of years.

Either way, you're not going to go wrong. Even if you think you need the balancing effect now, you won't in just a year or so. As the tree grows, The crooked trunk will be less and less noticeable.

Japanese Maples naturally have a nice branching pattern with plenty of curves. Why try to make it straight?
Mike

Thanks for the feedback Brandon & Mike. Ideally, I would liked to have had a strait trunk up to a certain height before allowing it to split into multiple trunks. However, with mail order, you never know how the tree will look. That said, I don't mind that the trunk is crooked, as long as their is a second trunk to offset it looking weird. I guess it makes the most sense to just let it do it's thing and review the situation again in a few years