Acer caudatifolium - Washington Park Arboretum, Seattle, accession 1997. One of the snake bark maples from Taiwan: a lovely and vigorous tree.
Acer caudatifolium - private collection (seed grown and cutting grown). The first two photographs are of the seed-grown specimen, the last three are of the cutting-grown specimen. The bark has yet to develop the coloring seen in the Arboretum specimen above.
The leaves in young specimens show great variability. These are from a 3 year old tree grown from seed. Photos taken today (April 2006) Gomero
This tree is at UBC Botanical Garden. UBC Accession #039509-5700-2000 (the year - last part of the number- is a best guess from another very out-of-focus photo) Alpine Garden, near the Old Marine Drive fence Photo by Wendy Cutler May 31, 2012 These leaves are not as elongated as others I'm seeing, for instance Daniel Mosquin's photo in this Acer caudatifolium ETOT.21 posting of a somewhat older tree. One posting in the Maples forum does mention the variability of leaf shape in younger trees.
The preceding still have the narrow general outline whereas the Old Marine Drive fence tree does not. Note also that snakebark maple seed taken from collections is often hybrid, one of the superior features of A. capillipes is that it tends to come true - not usual for this group. I think my post telling what the Hillier book says should be following postings of the Old Marine Drive pictures around the site, as it should pertain in each case.
The best I can do is quote it; (I cannot move/copy posts that are not in the Maples forum): Here is a photo showing the leaf shape of Acer caudatifolium from Jan De Langhe's image collection which matches the Hillier description: Copyright © 2008-2012 Jan De Langhe. Non-commercial use of material with correctly referencing the name Jan De Langhe and the web address is allowed: http://www.plantentuin.ugent.be
I was seeing the Old Marine Drive tree posting in more than one place, with separate, uncoordinated discussions.
Note that on the lower left corner of our accession labels there is a alphanumeric code. This refers to the bed number and is very useful for (internally) tracking down mislabeled plants. Now that it has adult leaves, it is obvious that this seedling is Acer rubescens. It is a plant from seed that was wild collected by Philip MacDougall in Taiwan in 2009.
