Murasaki Kiyohime 3/23/07

This is a brand new cultivar to my garden, so everything it does will be new and wonderful to me. I was surprised that it turned out so early in the spring and delighted with the interesting brown/rust colored spring growth. I'll post more on this cultivar as the year moves on.

Goshiki Kotohime 3/11/07

Always the harbinger of spring in my garden, Goshiki Kotohime is the first to leaf out. The leaves began to appear as proto-leaves around March 4, and a week later this is what they looked like.

Beni Shidare 10/20/06

Beni Shidare means "red cascading" and it's a deeply red pendulous dissectum. It has a mounding form and can get big (up to 5 meters high and 6 meters wide). It's bronze in the summertime. I'll post more on this cultivar as I learn more. It's new to my garden.

Sharp's Pygmy & Waterfall 10/18/06

This photo depicts part of my Maple Avenue, with Sharp's Pygmy on the left and Waterfall on the right. The photo was taken October 18, 2006.

Sharp's Pygmy 10/18/06

What would my garden do without Sharp's Pygmy? This is a fabulous dense and compact cultivar which comes out green in the spring with newest growth a light green, and then turns deep orange/red in the fall. It's a tidy, neat and dignified-looking plant.

Zen garden 5/9/06

The Zen Garden is just outside the deck of our guest house. There is a glorious wisteria growing up and across a frame over the deck, and in the spring the racemes hang down over the deck with a perfume that is intoxicating and totally beautiful. Other plants include a Crimson Queen and various evergreens (even a redwood), a fig tree, and many tiny saxifrages, kerria japonica, miniature azaleas, witchhazel, euonymous japonicum, and many more. It's a tranquil and lovely spot.

Dogwood 10/18/06

Dogwoods in the fall are just wonderful, and the leaf color is kaleidoscopic. So a dogwood fits in well with the intense color of many of the maples surrounding it. In this very hot summer environment, the dogwoods also provide some needed shade to the maples close to them.

Dogwood 5/9/06

When one collects a really large group of maples, it's always a challenge to find other species of plants that will complement the maple theme and enhance but not overpower a lovely landscape. Dogwoods fit the bill nicely, along with a few others.

Front Yard 5/9/06

Just a change of pace. This is the front yard with a Crimson Queen in the foreground. Behind it is my wonderful Koto no Ito, and just out of the photo is a Sango Kaku, Sunset and Corallinum. I love this part of the yard, especially in spring and fall.

Asahi Zuru 3/4/07

This beautiful bark coloring appears on our Asahi Zuru, even though Vertrees states this sort of coloration on the plant's branches and trunk appear only on Oridono Nishiki. I have several Oridono Nishikis which also have exhibited this sort of colorful striping on the stems and trunk, but it's clear this Asahi Zuru is a different cultivar from Oridono Nishiki and this is its bark coloration.

Kamagata 10/18/06

Kamagata is an interesting dwarf in winter with its densely-branched roundish shape. In spring the fresh spring green leaves are tinged with red at the margins, and in the fall you will be treated to reds, oranges and yellows. This dwarf is very neat and tidy in habit and is hardy. This photo (taken October 18, 2006) shows the fall colors in the semi-shaded area in which the tree lives.

Kamagata 10/18/06

Here's a closer look at the same tree, also taken October 18, 2006. Click on the photo for an enlargement of the image.

Goshiki Shidare 10/18/06

I love this maple. Goshiki Shidare this past autumn put on a glorious show as you can see in this October 18, 2006 photo. Click on the image to enlarge it. With camera in hand (and lots of memory), I waited for the sun to get low in the sky before taking this picture. The backlighting made Goshiki Shidare brilliantly gold, and the eye was drawn to this tree even when viewed from the far reaches of the garden. It seemed to be glowing with color.

Waterfall 10/18/06

There's a reason why so many gardens have "Waterfall." It's a dissectum with a tidy cascading growth habit, beautiful fresh green leaves in the spring and summer turning yellow in autumn, and it's hardy and virtually trouble-free. If you don't like to fuss with your garden, this is the maple for you.

Lemon Chiffon 10/18/06

This is such a pretty dissectum. In the spring the leaves are pale yellow/green, light green during the summertime, and yellow/orange in the fall. While it looks more delicate than it actually is, it does better if given partial shade. It's a jewel in the autumn.

Ariadne 10/18/06

This autumn photo of Ariadne shows the beautiful and vivid colors at that time of year. One of Ariadne's traits is that the leaf color contrasts with the vein color, and the variegation remains visible in the autumn.

Koto no Ito 10/18/06

Clearly this is one of my top ten Japanese maples. Koto no Ito is fascinating in the spring when it unfurls it's long-lobed lime-green leaves, a process that takes quite a few days and is one of those fun wonders of nature to experience; gorgeous in summer when its thin lobes float on a breeze; and dazzling in the autumn when it takes on a vivid golden-orange hue sometimes tinged in red. In each season it holds its color well for weeks, so it deserves a prominent place in the maple garden.

acer japonicum Aconitofolium 10/18/06

Aconitofolium is sometimes called the fern-leaf maple. As the name suggests, this large-leafed japonicum is delicate in appearance due to the deeply cut lobes. Fall color is brilliant red to red/purple. It needs some space, as it grows to 33 feet tall and wide, but mine is not a rapid grower so I'm not going to worry about the space it might eventually occupy.

Mikawa Yatsubusa 5/21/06

Click on this photo to enlarge and note the attractive densely layered leaves assembled like shingles with the newest growth light green. This is a tidy aristocrat that always draws oooohs and aaaahs.

Dad's Best 5/20/06

Introduced by Del Loucks, this lovely dissectum has very unusual greenish-bronze spring hues, and in the fall it's a glorious shiny bronze with red and green undertones. Del Loucks had a group of usual reddish dissectums he was growing, and his son identified this one as "Dad's Best."

Watnong 5/20/06

Watnong is a lovely cascading dissectum (very similar, in my mind, to Baldsmith). The spring leaves are sometimes a vivid red changing to a lighter red and green in the summertime, with bright red leaves in the autumn. However, you can see from this photo that on May 20, this tree decided to hint at what's to come by showing some red on its leaves. It's not the only cultivar to do so, and this trait adds drama to the landscape.

Ukigumo 5/20/06

Ukigumo means "floating clouds" and is an outstanding variegated cultivar. The best thing for me about my ukigumos is to view them with the sun's rays low to the horizon. When these cultivars are backlighted, they do indeed look like floating clouds. This is a magnificent and dignified tree.

Goshiki Shidare 5/20/06

This is one of my favorite Japanese maples. Goshiki Shidare exhibits a delicate and subtle cream-colored variegation in the spring, and in the fall the colors turn vivid yellow-gold. If you are lucky enough (as I am) to have this gorgeous tree in a special place given to back-lighting, it will light up the entire area. This is a slow-growing tidy jewel-box of a tree.

Sekimori 5/20/06

Sekimori is a matte green dissectum with fabulous yellow fall color. It has a cascading growth habit where the branches grow out and down, and it's wider than it is high. It's an elegant tree and needs considerable space to grow unless pruned to the size you want.

Ornatum 5/9/06

Ornatum is a dissectum well-known for its gorgeous strawberry-red spring color, green in summer, and vibrant red in the autumn. Though it's somewhat out of fashion for having been around so long, it's a lovely cultivar.

Sumi Nagashi 5/9/06

Sumi Nagashi looks, to me, like a small variety of Trompenburg. It has large purple/red leaves in the sring, green in summer and a vivid red in the autumn. The leaves are large compared to the rest of the plant, and the lobes tend to droop somewhat in habit.

Olson's Frosted Strawberry 5/9/06

Olson's Frosted Strawberry perks up the spring landscape with its unusual hue and contrasted veining. It's a special plant and does best in part shade.

Ao Shimi no Uchi 5/7/06

Ao Shimi No Uchi is a roundish bushy tree, wider than it is high, and a very nice specimen from the linearilobum group. Spring color is a light yellowish-green followed by medium green in summer and yellow/gold in autumn. It's a lovely rather slow-growing tree.

Kasagiyama 5/7/06

Brick red color defines this cultivar along with veins of a different color. Kasagiyama is rather rare, so buy it immediately if you ever see it available at your nursery. It adds a color unlike any others in the garden.

Sharp's Pygmy 5/20/06

Vertrees thought Sharp's Pygmy was an outstanding dwarf, and he was so right. It took a couple years for me to fully appreciate this compact little Japanese maple, but eventually I came around. It's a dense and low-growing tree with green spring color, the new leaves being lighter green. The fall color is bright orange and red, and given the density of the leaves, it's an exciting plant especially when back-lighted.

Baldsmith 5/20/06

This dissectum surprised us. It was green in the spring, but then late spring some of the leaves turned bright red. (We saw the same phenomenon in Watnong and Trompenburg.) Ours has been a slow grower, and it has a nice weeping/off center habit.