Q: We have a Japanese maple growing in our yard. It is a dwarf maple that is only about waist-high, and it has weeping, crimson-red leaves. This spring, two new branches have grown at the top of the trunk. They have bright-green leaves with red edges. They are very pretty. Do we have a new variety of Japanese maple that we can propagate? We like the look of both colors of leaves on the same tree. If we can grow a new tree from the new branches, we could plant the propagated tree near the original one.

A: Grafted trees that suddenly have new branches with more than one kind of leaf or flower need attention. I have seen grafted crabapples and other kinds of flowering trees suddenly sprout new branches. This is usually a bad sign.

The leaves of Japanese maples come in a wide variety of colors, shapes and sizes. A wild Japanese maple can grow to 50 feet high. Many cultivated varieties only grow to 10 feet high. Some varieties that have ferny leaves and weeping branches only grow to 6 feet high. These weeping forms are often grafted onto the top of a straight trunk. They may weep down from 3 feet high or 6 feet high, or from whatever height the graft was created.

I suspect that your tree is one of these grafted varieties. The red leaves are from the scion (the part of the good plant) that was grafted onto the rootstock. For some reason, your rootstock plant is now sending out new branches of its own.

If the scion is not doing well, the rootstock may think it needs to send out new branches. Check the red-leafed branches to make sure the scion is healthy. See if there are insects or signs of disease. If the graft union is showing signs of incompatibility, the scion may not be getting enough water and may not be sending enough food back to the roots. The graft union is often a ball-shaped area where the branches and trunk meet. Is there loose bark or another sign that the graft is falling apart?

If the green-leafed branches are allowed to continue growing, they may take over the whole tree, and the grafted red-leafed portion may die, or at least become less significant. The green-leafed branches are part of the original tree. They may have a better connection to the trunk and roots than the red-leafed branches.

The normal thing to do is prune off the green-leafed branches. If you want to try propagating them, now is a good time of year. Prune off the end of each branch in 6-inch sections with two to four leaves each. Each cutting should have leaves at the top with no stem section remaining above the leaves. At the bottom of the cutting, there should be a couple of inches of stem. Use a razor blade to slice into the bottom of each branch section in two directions so that you create four sections of stem at the bottom.

Dip the cutting into an IBA rooting powder. IBA is indole-3-butyric acid. It is a plant hormone that promotes root growth for cuttings. It is often available at garden centers. Fill a pot with a 50-50 mix of peat moss and perlite. Place the cut end of the cutting in the pot. Keep the cuttings damp and the humidity high by frequently misting the cuttings or placing the pots inside a large plastic bag, and seal the bag. The rooting will be very slow. It may take the rest of the summer to grow roots.

Email questions to Jeff Rugg at info@greenerview.com. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.