Some really lovely colour this year -- I'm looking forward to repotting it next year and hopefully seeing it get a bit bigger:
It's funny, my little Aureum has held up remarkably well so far this year, but Jordan in the same spot got absolutely blitzed and needed to be moved to a shadier spot. I expect your sun is stronger than what we get, though!
Right : we had 28°C yesterday, and we'll probably have 30 today, then perhaps above that in the coming week...
Ooof! Beautiful holiday weather; not so great for our poor maples though! My thermometer says 23C in the garden but I don't trust it: I was just outside now and it's scorching hot. Fingers crossed all our trees weather the heatwave safely!
As usual, was just a tease. Marcescent behavior rules my 'Aureum' every year. Leaves hold on tight until spring if I let them. Pictures show this weeks rapid transformation.
Marcescent - that is a good word to know, one that had passed me by till now. Here 'Aureum' has a brief nice autumn colour phase and then the leaves take on the brown and shrivelled look and cling on forever. It does somewhat spoil the nice period to have the marcescent leaves dotted amongst them but is most noticeable in the late fall when many other Japanese maples are at their peak and 'Aureum' is just a brown mess with all the nice tones a distant memory.
Just got an Aureum from the nursery two weeks ago. Put it under bright shade (north side of a building with no direct sun). It skipped the orange phase and directly jump to yellow
Good evening and welcome to the maples forum. Regarding jumping direct to yellow, you are lucky, Aureums often go straight to brown, Lol. Yours is looking very nice indeed.
It's the same word in French and only people who are particulraly interested in bontany know the word. Too long for Scrabble, and I can't think of another word that could be completed by "marcescent"...
In English the word "scent" could be expanded... Here is a pic of 'Aureum' looking very marcescent, taken about a week after the one I posted above:
My old tree shining away in the corner of the garden , my second maple i ever bought when i first started 26 years ago now. Bought as a little 4 litre plant form the Yorkshire flower show from Packhorse farm nursery when he used to show/attend all the shows back in the day , which he no longer does anymore.
Nearly lost this one in the drought of 22, so I'm pleased to post a photo of it on August 3rd 2023 looking small but happy.
Not surprisingly my fave JM and my first acquisition 11 years ago this November. Here it is as of this August morning.
A post in praise of Aureum! First, exceptional cold tolerance: Here in Minneapolis, we have always been on the cusp of 4B/5A. A typical winter for us means always a handful of days around -17 to -20 F or -27 to -29 C. Those temps often mean a lot of winter sun too. Temperatures also swing more capriciously here in the mid continent. The first two years our Aureum was in the ground, it suffered a tiny bit of dieback at the tips but more than filled in. This past year (I assume it is better established), it had no dieback whatsoever. I do put a barrier of chicken wire and burlap around it, but the top is still exposed. The spring color is showstopping. I can’t think of a fresher, purer spring green -to- chartreuse. Being in the north, it tolerates full sun and holds good golden green color all summer. Fall colors are excellent, although they turn sooner and fall sooner than other JMs. I wish they held longer but it does “extend” the fall colors show.
