Welcome "Hot Celebration". Seedlings are such an exciting world to explore... Les semis sont un monde tellement passionnant à explorer... Zaailingen zijn zo'n opwindende wereld om te verkennen...
I slip-potted my "Mon Nom est Rouge" seedling. In Turkish, Benim Adım Kırmızı, the title of a novel by Orhan Pamuk that I particularly liked. Cruel, and beautiful. A novel of "initiation"... If it keeps its spring colours like that in the next years, I'll be very happy :
This is past the seedling stage, so possibly off-topic, but one of my favourite seed grown JM's. Originating as a volunteer, it is obviously related to Trompenburg which was growing nearby, but differs in smaller leaves, shorter internodes and more compact habit, possibly more upright growing, and different tone of purple/red in the leaves.
Going through my maple pictures, I found images of my favorite green seed-grown maple from its very early age. Just to show that even plain looking green palmatum seedlings deserve a chance. I found it on a city street, at its first two true leaves stage, germinated between the cracks of the pavement on a sidewalk (probably blew off from the surface of a passing car that was at some point parked under a Japanese maple). I carefully removed it and placed in a water bottle until I got home several hours later. Then I scooped some soil from the yard and planted it in a medium size pot. I kept it in our screened porch and it grew quite a bit during the summer, though the leaves looked completely plain green and on the larger side. In the fall, I put it in the ground in full sun and the continuing growth showed some interesting colors (pic 1, Sep 5, 2018). Next spring I removed all swelling buds except the two on the very top. The leaves on the spring growth were huge with some dark coloring that didn’t look that interesting (pic 2, May 9, 2019). However, in the fall of its second year in full sun it developed some pretty colors on the new leaves (pic 3, Aug 15, 2019). That’s when I knew it could be something with a potential. I would have never seen these colors if I had kept it shaded in the porch, it would have looked entirely green. Pic 4 is from today after some rain, and pic 5 is this seed-grown maple (left) and my favorite grafted maple (right). It almost rivals the grafted tree in its spring display… I guess what I am trying to recommend is putting green seedlings in the sun (they can even be buried with their pot in the ground) to allow them to show their potential early on. In the shade they will stay all green (though all green can be very beautiful too).
Very nice seedling, and very nice story. The shape of the leaves, some of the lobes turning a bit to the side make me think it might be from a dissecum, perhaps atropurpureum, of some kind. Just a guess...
Alain, it very well could be… I have no idea. Nobody who sees it believes the story. That gives me extra satisfaction and pride, that I saved this poor thing. The pictures don’t do it justice… it is much prettier in person. But really, grow green seedlings in full sun.
Here is a seedling that is leading a charmed life. It has been growing in the pot of my 'Red Filigree Lace' for at least 3, maybe 4, years and I just left it for observation to see if it turned into anything interesting. But no, just your basic small leaved green palmatum. The 'Red Filigree Lace' is in bright shade most of the year and the seedling was growing under the canopy so not getting much light at all, and only growing slowly. This is the first year it has got any real size, almost doubling in height with the first growth flush to 40cm. Not sure why it suddenly became a strong grower this year, but it was starting to annoy me so I grabbed the stem just above the soil line, yanked as hard as I could, pulled it clean out and dumped it in the bin. About half an hour later I was taking the wheelie bin out to the street for collection tomorrow when I felt a pang of guilt and had to turn around and fish the seedling out of the bin. Amazingly it had not been squashed by the trash bag that had been dumped on top of it, and was not wilting or showing any other ill effects, so I grabbed a pot and mixed up some potting medium and replanted it. Another few hours later and I log into this forum and read @Nik 's story about saving a seedling in a water bottle do thought I would share a picture of my own rescue baby. It is dark now so had to bring it in to the kitchen to snap a pic, looking healthy and not wilting six hours after the yanking! I cannot emphasise how rough I was with this plant, I literally pulled it straight out of the ground with no preparation or forethought. The plan moving forward is likely to be to use the plant as a rootstock to practice grafting.
Because there was a big gap in my being active here, I should have mentioned some details about my work on propagating Japanese Maples. My maples have been providing a significant amount of seeds in the past few years. Last year I could harvest about half of kilo of seeds. Regarding the stratification, I don't remember having read anywhere that actually most of the seeds will germinate in the second spring. So, not being aware of that, I think I used to lose lots of seeds by forgetting and recycling the soil...
Does anyone know a matsumurae group maple (not dissectum) which has white/light green/green variegation?
Apologies for another non-seedling-related variegation question: I know about A. platanoides ‘Drummondii’ and A. campestre ‘Carnival’, but is there an A. palmatum cultivar with the type of variegation shown in this picture (sorry, the only plant I have with it is not a maple)?
Hi Nik, The Marginatum Group of the MS official JM classification, found here, https://maplesociety.org/maple-home-2/common-area/cultivar-area/cultivar-classification-and-key/ on the left hand link, proposes 'Butterfly' as the typical example. In the second phase of the cultivar DB Beta we will be adding in the group classifications. Others in this group would be 'Itame nibluke', 'Kagiri', 'Kara ori'. 'Roseomarginatum', 'Shojo-no-mai', etc. I don't think you'll be able to search by group for at least a while, though. But I guess your seedling will be part of the Reticulatum group, if it keeps its characteristics. It really takes a few years to be sure, sometimes even after 3 years: boom. They go plain green (or red). Cheers, -E
I did not know they can do that… Good to know. Thanks, Emery! As this is my first palmatum seedling with variegation, I am trying to learn more… (I have at least one, possibly more, variegated griseum seedlings, but except ‘Golden Lucky’ there is nothing else for that species.). If it survives and keeps the variegation, I suspect this palmatum seedling (and could very well be wrong) to be ‘Ukigumo’-type, but with matsumurae leaves. I checked the cultivars you mentioned, but none of them are quite like ‘Carnival’ or ‘Drummondii’ (at least two shades of green in the middle of the leaf with a wide white margin on all leaves, occasionally having all white leaves). I guess a palmatum cultivar like that doesn’t exist, otherwise it would be well known.
