Beginner Gardening: pruning a coral bark maple, 1 by mhighsmith

mhighsmith wrote:
I have a japanese coral bark maple in my front flower bed. It has been roughly 3.5 years since it was planted. I noticed early last year (or possibly before then???) that the tree has a couple of brances emerging near the ground that are green on the surface rather than the bright coral red. One of the branches is faily large (about 1.5 inch diameter; tree is roughly 6 feet tall), and there area couple of smaller branches. Should I cut these off? If so, what time of year is best to do so (obviously I'm in no major hurry since I've been looking at it this long); do I need to put anything on the cut area afterward? How close to the trunk do I cut it? You can't really tell the colors in the picture, but the large branch close to the ground heading left and the branch coming directly toward the camera are green. Any suggestions?