Japanese maples

Flower & Garden Magazine, Dec, 1996 by Pam Waterman

When Prominently Placed, a Japanese maple, with its delicate beauty and fall color, can be a highlight of your landscape each season of the year. Sometimes used as a tree, sometimes as a shrub, Japanese maples provide colorful foliage three seasons of the year and structural beauty all winter.

Rare is the American garden that wouldn't be enlivened by the finely cut or brightly colored leaves and intriguing branching habit of the numerous cultivars now available. A specimen maple is a garden highlight whether grown in a container or planted in the ground. And the rock garden or bonsai enthusiast will find that many maples easily adapt to small spaces.

Japanese maples, botanically known as Acer japonicum and Acer palmatum, offer a wide choice of shapes from dwarf weepers to full-size trees. Upright trees may reach 30 feet while the weeping, bushy types take years to grow higher than 4 feet. In leaf forms there is almost infinite variety -- from the familiar wide maple shape to the intricately carved leaves of a cultivar like 'Burgundy Lace.'

Since Japanese maples require modest care after planting, the only legitimate complaint a gardener can raise is that certain favorite cultivars grow slowly. Yet this can be an asset in that it encourages the gardener to give these plants the starring role they deserve in the landscape. Placed at the center of garden attention, a Japanese maple will appear different in each season but its modest growth brings a subtle, rather than dramatic, reminder of change.

When you are ready to add one of these trees to your garden, don't go to the nursery and ask for "a Japanese maple." That would be like asking for "a rose." To make a recommendation your nurseryman needs to know: Do you want an upright tree, a small tree with a wide canopy or a mounding shrub? Will the maple grow in a container or be planted in the garden? What color foliage harmonizes with existing plantings? And will the maple be protected from the hottest afternoon sun?

Most cultivars of A. japonicum, sometimes called fullmoon maple, have rounded, lobed leaves and a sturdy growth habit. They are often used in landscape situations where their fall colors of bright green to deep crimson will show up against evergreens or garden walls.

But most trees we think of as Japanese maples are actually A. palmatum, the most commonly propagated of the maple species native to Japan. The confusion surrounding these plants is due to the availability of hundreds of named cultivars, each with a slightly different leaf pattern, growth habit or color. Several of these small maples have leaves shaped like the palm of a human hand. Others have deeply serrated leaves. Some have green leaves? some purplish or red; a few cultivars have variegated foliage.

Japanese maples such as 'Bloodgood? and 'Atropurpureum' grow into upright trees with large, deep red leaves while dwarfs like 'Garyu? are full-grown at 3 feet. The popular cultivar 'Burgundy Lace? has deeply divided leaves and matures to medium size with a wide canopy? not quite as stiff as upright forms. If a modest tree fits your garden needs? ask for A. japonicum 'Aconitifolium? or A. palmatum 'Aureum.? Other attractive Japanese maples that suit a wide range of garden conditions include Rubrum,' a popular variety due to its deep maroon leaves; 'Bonfire,' a hardy tree with brick-red spring and fall color; and 'Roseo-marginatum,' a variegated-leaf maple with deeply cut, rosy-edged leaves.

The involved system of naming Japanese maples can drive the calmest gardener a little crazy. But not understanding the complicated names makes it easy to pick the wrong plant. My first maple grew beyond its allotted space in three years. I had mistakenly purchased an upright seedling variety that needed frequent pruning; for that location, a grafted cultivar with a mounding, slow-growing habit would have been better.

Those slow-growing plants are perhaps the most prized Japanese maples of all -- the bushy, weeping cultivars of A. palmatum with leaf structures that are impossibly complex and beautiful. More shrub than tree? they are commonly known as "dissectums," or cutleaf maples, and sometimes called threadleaf or scissorleaf maples. They grow wide heads and branch horizontally rather than vertically. The delicate leaves of dissectums may be burgundy? green-red? tangerine-red or chartreuse? to name a few. And most change color in the fall.

Since dissectums rarely grow taller than 6 feet? it is vital that their intricate and delicate branching be visible at eye level. In traditional Japanese gardens, dissectums are often grown on the sides of steps leading to a higher point in the garden. Or they may be placed on a mound so the plant's inner structure is discernible. One of the best ways to show off a dissectum is to plant it in a raised container.

Often weeping dissectum maples have lovely names evoking the appearance of their foliage, such as 'Crimson Queen,' 'Ever Red' and 'Garnet.' 'Red Filigree Lace,' a delicate tree with deeply serrated maroon leaves, tops many gardeners' lists as the loveliest of these cascading maples. 'Green Filigree,' another choice dissectum, bears a lacy chartreuse leaf that, in some locations? remains on the tree well into December.