Roger's Tree Pick: Japanese maple

When you talk about maples, you’re talking about a large family of trees with many types within the Acer clan. This month we shall look at Acer palmatum (pronounced “Ay-ser pal-MAY-tum”), which are native to Japan and Korea.

This species of tree can range from midsize shade trees to dainty, elegant little trees. They are slow growing to 20 feet in time and are a wonderful under story tree planted beneath larger taller specimens.

Acer palmatum are the most airy and delicate of all the maples and have a great number of wonderful features to behold throughout the year.

The common Japanese maple has green palmate type leaves and in spring erupts with a glory of lime green foliage. In autumn, the trees will produce assorted colors of the season with red/scarlet, yellow and variations.

The winter season brings in a bare skeletal branching structure that is botanical art in the highest form, in my opinion. The multiple trunks are muscular-looking, picturesque and gray and show nicely when lit up at night in any garden setting.

Japanese maples are grown for their green- or red-colored leaves, interesting growth habit and fine leaf texture. Growth habits vary widely depending on the cultivars, from those with rounded canopies to upright vase-shaped types. The more upright varieties make a nice patio or small shade tree for some residential lots and can be an attractive centerpiece.

And for those of you wanting to containerize the smaller types, I could not suggest a more appropriate tree given good cultural care and the proper type of ornamental container. The art of Bonsai has used the Japanese maples for centuries in that miniature creative container culture and old specimens can fetch thousands of dollars if sold at some of the high-end Bonsai shows.

If you decide to use them as a potted plant, give the trees a rich organic potting soil with excellent soil drainage. Also make sure to drill some additional drainage holes at the bottom of the container for good drainage flow. That one hole in most pots just does not do it.

Maples in general produce abundant winged seeds and in fall it is fun watching the seed capsules leave the parent tree and twirl down to earth, like miniature helicopters, to be planted.

When you read some of the nursery maple catalogs and see names like Beni kumo, Kihachifoh, Ukigumo and Ryuzu, you could dream that you are in a Sushi bar ready to order some delicious tidbit from a foreign land.

These maple hybrids and selections can give you a whole new meaning and appreciation of the tree world. Some of the leaf patterns and textures can look like freshly fallen snowflakes or like fine delicate lace one would see Bruges, Belgium.

I have seen a lot of plants from all over the world and I don’t think there is another tree form with such variations in their leaf patterns and textures as the Japanese maples.

There are a good number of great books on maples available through Timber Press in Oregon and a lot of the new maple cultivars are coming out of commercial growing nurseries from Northern California to Oregon which can be found at Joe’s Hardware in Fallbrook or out in Temecula at Armstrong Nursery.

I once used a Japanese maple in an oriental garden as a focal point, surrounding it with black bamboo, handsome granite boulders, river-cobblestones, black Mondo grass and flowering azaleas. I return to that tree every few years to give her a little care with a slight nip and a tuck and all is good.

Roger Boddaert is an arborist and professional landscape designer. He can be reached at (760) 728-4297.