Hi, This year my Sango Kaku behaves a bit strangely. It opened in Spring with yellow leaves as expected, but it seems to have skipped most of the 'green' stage. As you can see in the pictures below, all the top and side leaves have turned more orange/red. And there are some marks like a tan i.e. parts of leaves not exposed to sun (or shaded via a leaf above) are greenish. Spring in the UK was a bit late and a bit weird (frost, lots of sun, then lots of rain in particular) Do I need to move it into a more shady area to let it recover, or can it stay where it is? Is it sign of stress? It's in a pot, so can be moved around Thank you
Wow! I'll leave it to our more experienced members to comment more, but I don't see any sign of crispiness or die-back on the leaves, which is hopefully a good sign? Hopefully it's just responding to the weird spring and summer we've had so far in the UK - it does look lovely, so fingers crossed everything's okay!
This happens to shade-adapted leaves when the light level is increased dramatically. The redness comes from anthocyanins that are in a layer above the chloroplasts. By reflecting red light, these compounds act as shades, protecting the photocenters (or chlorophyll, if you wish). It doesn't appear necessary to do anything, IMHO, but if you want the leaves to be more green, simply move the tree into a more shaded location.
Good morning C, J @Osoyoung has described what is happening perfectly, so I won't go any further with that, but I will, say that this year my Sango kaku is doing exactly the same. Here is a photo of mine taken a few minutes ago. Hope this helps a we are only about 80 miles apart. D
Thank you all for replies! I am glad to see my Sango Kaku has nothing wrong :) To be honest, I like this orange color in summer! Like a pre-autumn foliage