One year growth on an Acer monspessulanum/Montpellier maple - with two Ls like the French city, not with one L like the capital of Vermont, as I often see it spelled ;-) Since I prune it to two metres each year, the new shoots are very vigorous: the concrete blocks at the back are 20 cm high (my neighbour's building a wall!), and the stepladder on the left of the tree is 1.80 metres high. So I reckon that the longest shoots (I left one of them just for fun) are well over 2 m. long. It's one of a handful of young seedlings I collected near "Brive-la-Gaillarde" in 1997, it stayed in a plastic pot for a couple of years, so I guess it's about 18 years old and has been in the ground for no more than 15 years. Though a rather southern species, I'm pretty sure that it can thrive even in Britain, provided that the soil dont stay soaked too long. Well, er... I've just realized what I've written: OK, it could survive in Britain ^^ (In the foreground, 'Seyriu' and 'Sango Kaku', about the only ones that have autumn colours: they stayed full sun from mid-July on)
What a great tree to add a vertical element without taking up too much room in the yard. Love the aesthetics of the vertical plantings covering up "the great wall". It's almost like it was always there and it contrasts the plantings nicely. Of course I am a big fan of the green wall you had going before the neighbor decided to make a wall of their own, but it works out well as a backdrop to your beautiful plantings. Seriously... Seiry-who came up with that crazy spelling anyway? I knew what you meant. Microsoft needs to add Japanese Maple's to their spell check. Half the time I use Google as a spell check when posting on here...ha..ha :-)
While we're on it no apostrophe in maples either, except when discussing something that belongs to a maple - as in "the maple's roots were cut".
If they are still present on the site there's an old hilltop property near Bellingham, WA that has several of these trees around the historic(?) house, one or two of some size (see Van Pelt, Champion Trees of Washington State, University of Washington, 1996). Otherwise it is seen only in collections around here.
It does thrive in Britain, with the tallest 18 m tall, and the stoutest (well north, at 56°30'N in central Scotland!) with a trunk diameter of 80 cm. Not planted very often, though, which is a shame.
It's widely available in Normandie, which has a similar climate to the southwest of England. It grows very well here, and my tree has the added advantage that the deer wont touch it; the young buds are long and tough, like great thorns. A very effective adaptation... Alain if you have a fireplace, the cuttings make excellent kindling after drying for a year or so.
I didn't know one could find them up north: in my area, the loire Valley, I've never ever seen one in any of the gardens, parks or even nurseries I've visited. the dense foliage, the dark green colour in Summer and the yellow leaves in Autumn are a nice backdrop for other trees throughout the seasons. And yes Emery, the wood is very hard and burns well when dry: I don't have a fireplace (I'm thinking of buying a stove though), but I use the dry branches for the barbecue.
We always wanted a fire element to the garden to extend the patio season, but really lack the room. We also were concerned about the drying properties of a fire in the garden. So we made a table top fireplace that burns bio-ethanol. The only bi-product is water and carbon dioxide. Here is a pic (only have an indoor photo because the evening lighting makes for poor photos, but it does work well on the patio table too)
