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In the 19 th century travelers and botanists began to bring trees back from Japan and they quickly became very popular with gardeners in Europe and America. Although some purists only grow original Japanese varieties, many of the best and most popular were developed in the West and have been introduced back into Japan. Many forms were developed in Japan and these of course have Japanese names, while others were bred in Europe or America and usually have English-sounding names. Japanese gardeners began to collect these forms, and produce more from seedlings, so that today at least a thousand different forms are known. Unlike many plants, where each individual is very much the same as another, these trees are naturally very variable, with different leaf-forms, colors and tree shapes. More than an excuse for a picnic, momiji-gari is considered a lofty spiritual experience. Japanese maple produce small flowers in spring and the seeds are the small ‘keys’ typical of all maples, which twirl down to the ground in fall.įor many centuries the Japanese people have travelled to the countryside to see the fall color, like east-coast Americans admiring the sugar maple. However the leaves are much smaller than on typical maple trees and since many garden forms have deeply divided leaves they may not be immediately recognized as maple trees. Being a maple tree it has the typical lobed leaf, with veins spreading out like the fingers of a hand and ending in five to nine lobes, with one lobe in the centre of the leaf. This tree grows in the shade of larger forest trees, which is why it is more shade-tolerant than most other deciduous trees. The bark is smooth and gray on older limbs, but green, red or sometimes pink on younger shoots. As a wild tree it grows 20-35 feet tall, occasionally more, and usually has several trunks, rather than a single central trunk. Japanese maples grow wild across the hills of Japan, Korea and into Mongolia and Russia too. Acer japonicum of Japan, Korea and Manchuriaīoth are shrubs or small trees with seedlings of the two species showing great variation in habit and in leaf patterns and colors.Butterfly Japanese Maple $84.50 – $149.50.The Japanese maples are varieties and forms of two species: In Japan the maple is called the “autumn welcoming tree” and it is planted in the western portion of gardens (the direction from which fall comes). The Japanese favor the greenleaved forms for their strikingly handsome fall colors. Japanese Maple Trees Colorful FoliageĪmerican gardeners prefer the red or purple types. The leaves are moderately to deeply segmented into five to 11 lobes with some varieties so deeply dissected they appear skeletonize. Heights vary from dwarf shrubs to small shade trees 20 to 25 feet tall. The shrubby types have round or globular shapes while the taller‐growing, more vigorous kinds have a somewhat open, vaselike crown. These trees exhibit wide variety in forms, heights at maturity, leaf patterns and spring, summer and fall foliage colors. These top Japanese maple trees comprise an unusually handsome group of plants which merit serious consideration. THE current trend toward smaller houses and yards spurs interest in scaled down trees for the landscape.