A year later and the tree had recovered from the previous year's harvesting and root pruning well, and as is typical with all Acer species, had rooted strongly through the year.
The image above shows the back of the tree with its surface roots uncovered during repotting. The original wire tourniquet can still be seen embedded into the bark. Though there are roots at the back of this trunk, they are too low and new roots are needed in the middle of the area circled in red to create a radial root spread.
I had tried to prompt new roots in this area during 2006 by drilling holes in the trunk (these are then filled with rooting hormone and can sometimes prompt new root growth around the wounds). Unfortunately, in this case it had just prompted a sucker above one of the three holes.