Dear members, can someone send Penta seeds to me? I would really appreciate it, and will pay the posting cost of course.
If mine ever get old enough, and thrive enough, to produce seeds I will gladly share them. Watch this space (in about 10 years time!) Just ahead of the first properly frosty weather I put them into the (unheated) greenhouse yesterday. Currently I have 3 that are several years old and 2 young ones heading into their first winter. All leaves dropped some time ago so no pictures to post. One of the older ones has some semi-healed bark dieback around the base of the trunk; luckily it does not seem to be girdled, and there is evidence of healthy wound wood. I have seen similar damage on young potted maples when grubs have eaten the roots and started on the lower cambium when they ran out of food - I am not sure if this is the case here or if it has been caused by some sort of oomycete or fungus. They had a dose of vine weevil nematodes at the end of September so hopefully that is the end of it!
Some pictures of an Acer pentaphyllum at Westonbirt arboretum from 17th May 2024. They have several specimens listed in their database and I visited three (or four?) of them in the time I had available. All were still alive but were mostly only in the initial stages of leafout, so not much to take a picture of. The most advanced one is pictured below. Also the most interesting because the trunk was cut back to ground level approximately 2-3 years ago based on eyeballing the new growth. I have no knowledge of the reason it was cut back. If due to winter dieback, the winter 3 years ago was one of the coldest in recent times. Obviously there could be another reason for it to be cut back, even the possibility of an overzealous employee or volunteer who mistakenly thought it was dead due to the notoriously late leafout. Originally planted in 2013:
Here is a specimen from St James's Park in London. I took a few seeds too, so maybe I could get lucky. The pic with the lake in view is difficult to discern the tree from. It's there in the middle section, but the other pics are clearer. I included the lake pic just to show its location if anyone wants to find it. It's near the Buckingham Palace end of the lake.
Finally, on 2022 dec, I purchased 3 Penta-babies. Here is the latest photo about them: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=455184237384518&set=a.113829328186679. I growing them in pots. They are really slow-growing and very sensitive, but here we are on the edge of its habitat.
this maple is very delicate in my zone ,now is in total shade and this is the right position in Rome .is easy to germinate ,but the plants by seeds haven t good resistance to ho wind and easy died best is by graft on the Acer pseudoplatanus ( of course this is my experience in usda zone 9 ,clay soil, expo nord-ovest etc)
