PROTECTING JAPANESE MAPLES AGAINST WIND AND SUN SCORCH

This post is, in particular, about a Japanese maple that I planted years ago in the wrong position at the top of a slope and rather exposed,  (yeah, I know!),  and which I now cannot move because it has jammed its main roots under sub-surface rocks and under my lawn. The chances of digging it up without killing it are low and so it has to stay put.  A couple of days ago the wind was so fierce here, at 850ft high above sea level on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire, that I thought it was going to rip the canopy off poor old Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan' that I am growing, for practical* reasons, as a multi-stem tree:  multi-stem Katsura/multi-stem Jordan.

Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan' after ferocious winds

You can see that there is a little wind burn but not half so much as I was expecting.  The above image was taken two days after the strong winds had hammered it. It seems like the olla pot that I embedded a couple of feet uphill from Jordan is working. During the wind I kept going out and topping up the 2 litre olla pot with water, ensuring that Jordan could suck up all the water it needed to cope with the onslaught.  

I wanted to try to understand the science behind how it works, roots supplying water to leaves, and this was the AI answer:    

"A Japanese maple extracts water from the soil to its canopy using the cohesion-tension theory. Wind enhances this process be accelerating evaporation (transpiration) from the leaves.  This creates a negative pressure (suction) that pulls a continuous chain of water molecules all the way from the roots to the canopy."

* Acer Jordan is encroaching on an access area between lawn and shed and also competing with the Wildeve rose on the fence behind it.  I want Jordan's canopy raised so that it is lifted above the fence and I don't have to keep moving it out of the way when I go to the shed. 

Acer shirasawanum 'Jordan' being trained as a multi-stem tree