According to the Vertrees/Gregory book, the name of this cultivar means the 'dancing re-faced monkey'. Introduced by Rareflora Nursery in Pennsylvania. It is a variegated cultivar close to 'Beni shichihenge' but it has a stronger pink color in the spring as seen in the pics attached. I find this variegation, mixing pink and pale green, very attractive. The plant has been in the ground for 3 years and is about 50-60 cm tall. The book gives 2-4 m after 10 years. The first pic is from early April and the other two, early May. Gomero
Vertrees/Gregory's book has the wrong meaning for 'Shojo-no-mai'. It has nothing to do with 'red' or 'face' or 'monkey'. 'Shojo' in japanese means virgin or maiden. I've also have seen this maple with the spelling of 'Shoujo' which means little girl, daughter, or young lady. The 'No' is possesive. 'Mai' is a very old word from the Edo period (1600 to1800's) for a dance that developed in western Japan and today is used to mean traditional dance. (Traditional meant wearing colorful clothing) So you could say 'Shojo-no-mai' means - young girl dancing. Simple -yes, but in the japanese culture one has to picture a young girl bejewled and wearing bright colored kimono's moving and swaying with fancy fans in hand. Now that a romantic picture for this beautiful Acer Palmatum!
Hi Poetry 2 Burn, Thanks for the comp. Just started collecting for myself after years of selling these beauties to others,(sort of a free lance landscaper/gardening consultant amongst other things.) At this point I have 7 and thanks to your posted picks (your group pic. was over the top -WOW!) I've about 3 or 4 or was that 6 more in the planning. Oh well, life's a palmatum!
Well here we go again with names and spelling. In different parts of the world we spell cities and countries differently. Case in point the city of Moscow, Moskva and Moskau, then there are the russian letters to spell the city. I found no translation for 'Shohjoh. I have to say that I have bought many trees where the name has been misspelled. I myself have done it more than once on a tag. Anyhow, this is a nice tree. Similar in color to a few others.
"Shohjoh" is the same word "shojo" as in the cultivars 'Shojo', 'Shojo shidare', 'Deshojo' and 'Shin deshojo', and is said to be the name of a red-faced orangutan character in traditional drama, or more simply a word for orangutan. More properly it should be written with a [WIKI]macron[/WIKI] over the o's to indicate a longer vowel sound, but the macron is not in most standard character sets so is difficult for people to use in practice. ("Tokyo" is another example that should properly have macrons above the o's, but is almost universally written without.) The "oh" in "shohjoh" is simply an alternative way to indicate the long vowel sound. Shojo without the long vowel sound means virgin or maiden, as mentioned previously in this thread. Since this cultivar name is usually written with the long vowel sound I suspect the originators intended it to mean 'dancing orangutan' rather than 'dancing maiden', but I couldn't know for sure. [Edit: not suggesting orangutan literally, more the colour association with the red faced orangutan character in traditional drama as mentioned in Vertrees.] Transliterating names into languages with totally different character sets cannot be an easy task, and I respect the efforts of those who have done so, and the efforts of those who have tried to make sense of it for the benefit of us all.
Here are a couple more photos of this beautiful tree. The spring time pink variegation is so bright on this cultivar.
