Here's a peculiar maple I inherited. Can anyone tell me why it looks so peculiar? It's about 15' tall. The top 3/4 has leaves like on the left, and the bottom 1/4 has leaves like the one on the right of the pen. Thank you.
Looks like you have a Acer palmatum "Butterfly", but the rootstock sprouted branches that grew faster than the Butterfly graft, and the Acer palmatum seedling used for the rootstock took over.
Also google the term 'reversion' in Japanese maples. Butterfly and similiar cultivars are bad to 'revert' back to typical acer palmatum form. I have seen larger specimens that only retained 10-20% variegated leaf form and the rest looked like typical acer palmatum leaf form. My suggestion every spring and fall, look the tree over and remove all limbs with typical leaf form so this won't happen to your particular tree (which is beautiful and large for this cultivar). Justin
