A friend just sent this picture of A. longipes ssp longipes from my garden, june 2011. It has been withstanding the drought very well. The leaves come out very pointed with long lobes as the name suggests. They have a dark almost blackish-green color which is very unique in the garden. As they mature they become more difficult to distinguish from A. pictum varieties although my specimen never becomes as shallowly lobed as the one Laurie has photographed.
Well, my longipes is a little bit confusing. Although Kew reports var weixiense as synonymous with ssp longipes, it looks like a different tree to me. Flora of China describes longipes as usually 3-lobed, rarely 5-lobed (http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=2&taxon_id=200013027) whereas mine is always 5 lobed, although the back lobes are sometimes very small. The picture below is of some of my leaves shown next to the illustration of var weixiense from MOW pg 221. I also found var weixiense in this rather excellent photo collection taken at Kunming botanical garden in Yunnan province: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52033111@N08/5495572744/ The Kunming tree looks identical to mine as far as I can tell from this photo. So I'm guessing A. longipes var weixiense is what I've got. The herbarium material from Jan De Langhe (http://www.henriettesherbal.com/pictures/botany/acer/jdl-acer-145.html) also confirms the mostly 3 lobed leaves of A. longipes.
The herbarium material from Jan De Langhe is of very good quality. He was with us at the Maple Symposium and I had the chance to exchange a lot with him. For the last 7 years he has received a lot of feedback on his herbarium material as well as for his excellent identification keys. I would tend to trust them myself. Gomero
