The line between a garden variety (pardon the pun) acer palmatum and one sold as sango kaku is often quite blurry to me. I understand that certain maples are selected for the brilliance of their new growth, and tendency for that growth to maintain its pinkish color over longer periods of time, but it seems to me that if you planted a slew of green maples in a field, some would grow up looking quite like sango kaku. This stands in contrast to me with something like koto-no-ito, where you could plant thousands of green maples and none of them would resemble harp strings.
What I found striking is that on 'Sango kaku', the red colour tends to disappear on 4,5,... year-old branches. Here even the base of the trunks retain a reddish colour.
I love the low, gold-orange light in winter, before sunset and when the sky is clear. A Shirasawanum 'Autumn Moon', against the bark of a Prunus pissardii about to flower, and in the background, the typical "broom" shape of a Zelkova. And on the ground, er... an artistic composition of pots and used material : 'Hana matoi'. The bamboo stakes behind are for a 'Rainbow' :
I was just admiring 'Hana matoi', the green bark and reddish tips are super attractive in winter. Glad you took the pic, so I don't have to!
"Les grands esprits se rencontrent", as we say :°) What struck me is that the branches are more yellow than green and the tips rather red. The colours on the photos are indeed the true colours.
I'm actually prepping some images for this thread, but this one was on my screen: mellow yellow,,, :P
We take old Cooper up the road a few hundred meters every day, which is about all he can do now; he often likes to break things up with a role and a siesta. He just happened to chill in front of the sign: too funny to pass up (and he posed for plenty long to get the camera out, lol).
I made a survey of some of the Snakebark Maples (Section Macrantha) that we grow here. It's not all of them, but there are still a lot, it will take a couple of posts. Some I left out because they're too little, or I forgot (like the micranthums). Some look a bit bland, but when you zoom in on the photos (or look really closely) there is often amazing detail and a panache of different colors. A couple you'll see that different expositions change the bark colors completely. We lost some big A. davidii last year (Earnest Wilson, Hagelunie and Selection) and I missed some others, not to mention those in pots which aren't very accessible to photograph... A. pensylvanicum A, x conspicuum 'Phoenix' A. tegmentosum A. morifolium A. laxiflorum A. crataegifolium A. pectinatum 'Alice' A. morifolium (afternoon sum) A. rubescens A. pectinatum ssp taronense A. forrestii (poss hybrid) Don't forget to open in a separate tab and zoom! More to come. -E
Continuing the tour of Section Macrantha (snakebarks): A. davidii 'Viper' A. tegmentosum 'White Tigress' (apparently) young plant in shade A. pectinatum 'Sirene', full sun A. capillipes, wild collection in full sun A. kawakamii A. rufinerve 'Albolimbatum' A. capillipes 'Honeydew', full sun A. x conspicuum 'Silver Vein', full sun. As you'll see in a later post, it is very different from 'Silver Vein' in shade. More to come! -E
Well, I don't miss snow! Especially driving in it. Though it's blowing pretty hard out there right now... Back to the snakebarks. I really love these maples, and can lose myself in the bark both in winter and summer, when it changes quite a lot as the sap is flowing. They're not always the easiest to grow, but very worth it. A. rubescens 'Red Flamingo' Acers x conspicuum 'Silver Cardinal' (left) and 'Elephant's Ear' A. x conspicuum 'Elephant's Ear'. It is rarely seen, because it doesn't have too much interest. Most specimens look chlorotic, the leaves seldom fulfill the promise of the name, and the bark isn't great. Even the son of the person who selected it doesn't like it very much! Certainly the least interesting of the original 4 conspicuums. 'Silver Cardinal', the bark has a very unusual blue hue that persists even on quite old wood. A. rubescens 'Yakushima nishiki'. One of my favorite rubescens, it is quite upright and the yellowish bark is very variable, changing frequently on a single branch. Maybe better even in summer than winter. A. x conspicuum 'Silver Vein' grown in good shade. It makes a great tree, far better than when grown in sun (which could be said for most, but not all, of the Section). The final pic shows a healed over pruning cut near the base, the snaky pattern even grows on the wound wood and the graft union. The understock is A. davidii. A. rufinerve, which does fine in full sun. A great maple which used to be much more popular. Well, that's our "3 hour tour" (as Gilligan once said). Roll on Spring! :) -E
It's the 10th December 2022 and after a night of -7°c I thought I would re open this thread. I expect there are lots of lovely photos around now with frosts on the stems in the UK and around the northern hemisphere. So here are a few of mine this morning. Green dissectum Inaba shidare x 2 Osakazuki Okushimo Ariadne x 2 Butterfly And a couple of photos of my windows this morning showing the cold. 'Keep warm everyone'
Not quite the bare bones, but this struck me a couple of days ago. A. sinense second flush of growth from September, in the cold. Thankfully the worst is over for now, currently about 10°C!