Hello ! Can someone please help me identify this maple ? Photographed in mountains of Guizhou, China cca 25 km south of Leishan a month ago. 1250 m asl. The seedlings grew on the forest floor of a mature Cunninghamia forest. Unfortunately, no inflorescence yet… Thank you very much !! Roman B. Prague, Czech Republic
Interesting! I'm following. Thought at first it might be a form of A. chingii as it is present in Guizhou but it is not, that is 5 lobed and margins are mostly entire.
Meanwhile, a mail correspondence with an expert occured: it is nearly impossible to identify JUVENILE maples acording to the JUVENILE leaves appearence (I could have anticipated that), however, given the geographic location, Acer flabellatum and/or Acer elegantulum are probable candidates.
I don't have Acer flabellatum, nor have I seen any so far, but I have Acer elegantulum grown from seed and even when the plant is young, the lobes are not so thin. I found this link about Acer flabellatum var. yunnanense: Acer Flabellatum Var. Yunnanense from Burncoose Nurseries Since the province of Guizhou borders Yunnan, this may be a good candidate...
Well of course that's true, it's notoriously difficult (see practically impossible) to ID a seedling when you don't know the provenance. But you can perform a process of elimination to narrow it down. For example, it is not A. flabellatum. I agree it doesn't resemble elegantulum, but there is a possibility of local variations. Also it's entirely possible that it might be a hybrid, as maples of this section are promiscuous. If I had the time I would search on Flora of China for maples that occur in the province and the altitude where it was found.
Alain, the Flora of China claims Acer flabellatum var. yunnanense to be synonymous both for both A. flabellatum and A. campbellii, which does not make the whole puzzle easier. Luckily a very tiny seedling now resides vith me in PRG potted and even if it is not winterhardy here (as it probably would be in your home town) I still have fair chance to observe it growing... So report may follow in future.
Hello, emery. Will you please tell me why you exclude A, flabellatum ? As mentioned in my reply to Alain, Flora oc China does not make it easier due to approx. dozens of synonyms. As also mentioned, there is a certain chance to observe the seedling maturing, so one day I may come with more exact info...
Sorry, saw this earlier and forgot to reply. I don't agree with FOC on everything either, and I believe over the next 20 years we will see some modifications coming along. But taxonomy is like religion, the faith of some will be in the book! :) Truly when I looked at your picture originally I was not thinking the morphological differences that flabellatum might have up into this area. I have seen lots of them but never one so narrowly lobed and so acuminate. But of course it's foolish to rule anything out based on a single photo. As time goes on, we get some more mature leaves, can look at buds, flowers and fruit, we'll have a better idea of what it might be; or what it's not. Still, flabellatum is usually a 7 lobed leaf, with occasional 5 lobed rarely mixed in, which is why some consider it a ssp of campbellii.
With respect to synonyms, the new Maple Society website has the Accepted Synonyms list developed by Dan Crowley. Like a lot of things on the site which are unfortunately newly broken, the download of the list doesn't work, but you can look at the list (and search it of course) on the page in your browser. https://maplesociety.org/species-list/accepted-synonyms-list-for-acer/
I know that the new site is still at an early stage and yes, a few things need to be reviewed : the link "You can also download the synonym list here. " is dead. Either the pdf has not been uploaded yet, or it's a wrong file address. It often happens when you transfer a project from a computer (local address) to a server. And the table on the page (id="tablepress-4" class="tablepress tablepress-id-4") has too small characters to be read on my computer. But thanks Emery for all your investment before it was put online and someone else is in charge now, in particular for the very valuable section "Acer Species Vegetative Scans - Maple Society". MOD -- removed dead link, because dead links send notes to the forum admins every day...
LOL, it was uploaded alright. I suppose I made the pdf, but I certainly tested it!! Anyway, so it goes. Zen is. :) The plan had always been to put up the vegetative scans, which Koen Camelbeke of Wespelaar and Jan deLanghe from U. Ghent generously gave me permission to share. But I confess it became a last minute thing, very time consuming and I was unable to put more time into optimizing the page to load faster. I batch-reduced the images, but the thumbnails still got a little big, as there are many of them. Hopefully someone will put some more time into this some day. Who knows. Glad you find it useful, I thought it was a really important feature.
