Many of us have seedlings from various maples : not only we can never be sure they will come out to look like the "true species", or "cultivar", but sometimes they look interesting. Here are a couple I like, no genealogy, no name, just maples from seed that I like. Nice colours, half-dissected lobes, red bark. Interesting if it stays like that, innit? I took the other one to make an experiment. I watered it with food colouring when it budded out to take a picture of a "Blue Acer" : it failed, but the spring leaves show nice colours, and the twigs are a flashy red : A seedling from an "Atropurpureum dissectum" of some kind, surprisingly "yellow" (my 'Flavescens' has green leaves', no interest at all)
Alain, your seedlings are lovely! I find myself liking generic palmatum green seedlings more and more. I have spread quite a few around the yard. Here is one that I am trying to make go tall quickly. Leaves in spring are this orange color, turns to green for the summer, then in fall is deep scarlet red. I think in two more years the general shape should be there.
My favorite seedling is also my first, now 6-years old. It was planted in the yard in its first fall, and it took off. Now it is more than 7 feet tall. It turns light green for the summer with soft pink/orange tones for any new growth. Colors in the fall are nothing spectacular, but I still love it. The best thing about it, in addition to its vigor, is the size of the leaves. They are tiny, the largest are about 3 cm across.
One more picture of my favorite seedling from the previous post. To the left of it in the back is the stump of a large red oak that we sadly had to remove few years back.
On the plus side about the stump, it is frequently visited by a pair of pileated woodpeckers (almost every day). They are very large and beautiful birds.
Here’s a few of mine.. The colour of the 3rd seedling is quite interesting..better in reality than the photo, it’s a red/chocolate colour, if it survives and grows out I’ll call it rouge au chocolate haha. The last seedling seems to have Trompenburg characteristics. @AlainK has any of those Arboretum seeds I collect for you continued to grow out with interesting colours? They looked promising last year when you shared photos :)
Here they are, I haven't repotted/slip-potted them yet. I think they're too young yet for the colours to be established, but they show a lot of differences :
A couple from my Linearilobum that look interesting, these are in their second year now. First time I've tried to grow from seed, I had a few come up in the garden in the past but they either didn't like being moved or the dog got them, so I'm really pleased with these little ones.
Acer platanoides x truncatum seedling. First two pictures are from today, the deer simply adore it and do not allow it to grow past 1 m tall. I have to find a better way to protect it this year. Last pictures are spring and summer growth from previous years.
So far I have managed to protect the platanoides x truncatum seedling. I am trying something new this year, using 5 ft wide chicken wire pleated like a harmonica on the ground around the seedling and secured with some stones (picture 2). I am also using it for an Amelanchier seedling and it seems to be working well (pic 3 and 4). Apparently the deer are very particular about what they step on, and do not like the chicken wire raised above the ground. Without protection (pic 5) a seedling close by is again decimated. Even if I use large number of dead branches stuck in the ground around maples, it usually makes no difference (pic 6), but occasionally helps (pic 7).
This year sieboldianum seedlings doing well so far. 2 year old siebold seedlings Pseudosieboldianum x seedlings Variegated one ( I want get excited until it lives and hold it)
I have several hundred Shirasawanum seedlings developing nicely this year, mainly from Jordan, I know they won’t be clones of Jordan but I was expecting at least some of them to have the typical Full moon leaf shape or doesn’t that develop until they are much older.
I pricked out the first batch of variegated sycamores yesterday. They're actually looking much cheerier today. I'll mark some others in the garden, but wait for the stems to harden some more as these were a bit tricky. In my seed trays, I only got a single variegated plant. So lots of root stock. This years seed just coming out, though you can see there are some nice yellow cappadocicum. The other seed beds are starting, but not much to look at, everything went in late to stratify. The rest are last years seedlings, various different maples.
My only dissectum is this 4 year old seedling, which appears to like spreading out. It is somewhat hidden (pretty sure my husband doesn’t even know about it… he does not care for weeping trees of any kind). It is growing on me and I will probably keep it. If not, I will give it to someone who likes cascading varieties.
Different type of seedling (rootstock) mixed with some grafts Cool looking seedling from a mature pseudosieboldianum seedling More seedling I've been watching this one for a few years now and it holds it red tips well into the summer months.
A bunch of seedlings from a dissectum mother. These are 2 years old now and of the survivors 8 are full dissectum with 2 non-dissectum. I don't think I have lost many since germination, maybe 1 or 2 of the weaker ones. Edit: There may even be 9 dissectums, I don't think I counted the tiny one at 5 o'clock!
Hi, this is a 3 year old Jpanese maple grown from seed, it may resemble a particular cultivar, I have only noticed it this spring and like it a lot. I will post more
