Is my japanese maple safe in a storm?
It is small and low enough that whole-tree failure is rare; the damaging event is a multi-stem or grafted specimen splitting at a tight, included-bark union under ice and losing half its value in one night. Fine, twiggy laceleaf and weeping forms accumulate a disproportionate ice load for their branch diameter, which is why cabling a mature specimen is genuinely worth doing here.
What pruning can and can't prevent
Never prune in spring, because maples bleed heavily then and lose a large volume of sap; late summer or full dormancy is the window. The trap is over-thinning — the layered branch habit is the entire value of the tree, so lion-tailing exposes thin bark to sun and triggers watersprout brooms that never look right, and a few small cuts each year beats one big cleanup.
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