japanese maple

[buggybelle]

can someone help,every winter my japanese maple shed its leaves & every spring grows new ones.it's done this for the past 2 years,but not this year.This year the bottom half has grown new leaves & the top half has stayed bear,no leaves at all & looks dead. could this be a grafted tree or does this just happen & should i cut the top part off or should i just leave it .

[alan30]

Did the top half start to leaf and then get damaged by a frosty wind? Failing that you are likely looking at a rooting problem where the root system cannot provide water/nutrients for the whole crown (top) so in an effort to stay alive the the tree 'balances' availability against need. If the top is dead, and there sometimes can be a second flush of leaves, then you may as well cut back to a growing point and hope the root/shoot ratio balances itself again. Be careful about using fertilisers at this point as a weakened root system may be damaged by them.

[buggybelle]

thanks for that alan30, i will give that a try!