I have a 3-4 year old ukigumo (in ground) which had produce excellent coloration in the past but this year came out entirely green. The leaves still have the texture and irregularity of shape as years prior with a few exceptions. For those who have had the plant, is it likely to wax and wane in variegation over the years, or once it goes green does it ever come back? I have avoided the word "revert" becase I am not talking about one branch or shoot, but the entire tree. I did see this thread here: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?p=148744 and this from Mr. Shep concerned me: "all green with no variegation, can remain non variegated and these leaves should be plucked off from the rest of the tree when we see them. " This would be my entire tree! From what I can tell from past coloration the the tree would have been a ukigumo rather than a floating cloud (see Mr. Sheps explanation of the difference. )
Sometimes a soil rich in nutrients can impact how well a variegated Maple will have variegated leaves. One of the reasons why we do not advise fertilizing new plantings right before or soon after planting in ground. Having a Ukigumo leaf out all green does not bother me but if all of the successive flushes of new growth are devoid of variegation then we might have a problem. We had some greening issues when Ukigumo and Floating Clouds container plants were over fertilized in the nursery, generally seen when we fertilized them with a granular, rather than a liquid form of nitrate Nitrogen. Once we saw some variegation by the third flush of new growth we felt a lot better about these plants. Ukigumo being a more vigorous plant than Floating Clouds can revert more often than Floating Clouds usually does. Meaning it is not unusual to see Ukigumo be all green in color when the plants are too "happy" with their growing environ. It is when we see overly vigorous new growth that have unusual green different shaped leaves is when the tree is wanting to return to wild type in many but not all cases. We saw some of this unusual growth when Ukigumo was grafted onto seedling amoenum rootstock, much more so than when these plants were grafted onto seedling palmatum and matsumarae rootstock. As an example, I saw last evening a large Sango kaku with the old style coral trunk coloring we bought as a landscape plant three years ago was throwing out a rather vigorous limb sport right from the lower trunk. I plucked off this sport from the tree fast as I then knew this tree was grafted onto seedling amoenum. If I let that sport stay on the tree it would eventually take over the entire tree and in short order we would no longer have a Sango kaku but end up with a rich green colored tree that had none of the same characteristics of the Sango kaku. This kind of limb sport return can easily do the same thing to a Ukigumo or a Floating Clouds which is why we recommend plucking these growths off the tree as soon as we see them. A reversion of non variegated growth is not so worrisome if the leaf shapes are the same as what the cultivar would normally be had those leaves been variegated. Jim
Paxi one question,have you pruned a little every year?because i read that some variegated jm want for maintenance a little pruning every February(in my zone 9 b) HTH alex
Thank you for the detailed reply. I will get a pic up if it would help. For what it is worth, have never fertilized, but growth seems vigorous at this location (seems to fit your description of being "happy at this location"). Alex, have not pruned, but "plucked" the occasional all green leaf in the past.
I have been growing two Ukigumos from two different European suppliers for the last 5-6 years and they have been consistently 'Ukigumos' without any detectable difference from one year to the other. This winter I bought a third one (7-8 years old plant grown in the ground) from yet another supplier and to my surprise in unfolds like a 'Floating Clouds' according to Jim's description. Of course, I would have to wait at least another growing seasn to reach a final conclusion. Gomero
Paxi- I have 2 'Ukigumo's' from 2 different suppliers. 1 is in a large pot and the other is in the ground. Both are around 7-8 years old. I consistently fertilize both in the spring (can't resist) with low nitrogen fertilizer and would like to say I am consistent in how much and the brand I use. Both trees have been in the same location for the past 3 years without being disturbed or having a change in the amount of sunlight they get. Last spring, both trees came out with nearly 100% variegation and were stunning to say the least. This spring, both trees are only around 10% variegated (an estimate). I know for sure we had 2 very different winters in the past 2 years with last winter being the 3rd coldest on record (and very wet) and the one before being very mild. I guess my point is, aside from soil/fertilizer influence and the influence of sunlight on these plants colorations, maybe winter conditions plays a large role (like mean temperature or soemthing). I also think this cultivar, which I have owned each of these 2 trees for the past 5 years, is just somewhat inconsistent at best for its amount of variegation. As best my memory serves, with the exception of last springs show, this plant shows around 30-50% variegation on the leaves with remainder being 'typical' in color and shape. Justin
The question of Paxi: still remains unanswered. My new 'Ukigumo' has about half of the branches green and I wonder whether or not I should prune them off (my two other 'Ukigumos' have never displayed any kind of branch reversion, so I do not have any experience on this). Gomero
paxi- with gomeros help, let me clarify by saying it is my opinion that the 'Ukigumo' cultivar does not revert in the classic sense such as other cultivars such as 'Ao kanzashi', 'Beni shi en', or 'Butterfly' in which the reversion looks like a typical red or green palmatum of various leaf shape and much different from the cultivar leaf type in my honest opinion, 'Ukigumo' is rather inconsistent year to year in the amount of variegation it will have- in my opinion, after watching my 2 trees over the past 5 years, only prune your tree for shape if you so desire and hope for a better year next year- part of the joy and frustration with japanese maples year to year justin
I have bought several large Ukigumo over the years. A couple Ukigumo I bought durning the winter have been disappointed in spring when they came out with mostly green leaves. In both cases pruning would not help since i would cut down 95% plus of the tree. I had them for a few years and nothing changed, they still stayed the same. Those trees have been removed and passed on to someones field tree. My comment is this, if you do not have a good tree it is not worth it to hope it will come back, since it most likely will not come back to the a great tree. Ukigumo are spectacular trees.
I have three Ukigumos: one in deep shade, another in bright filtered light, and another with some sun and filtered light. I am happy that I have not experienced any reversion whatsoever in any of these trees over 6 years' time, and I feel the one in the "bright filtered light" performs the best in terms of color. It's such an amazingly beautiful tree. I have one high on the bank of a ravine where the late sun lights it up, and it just glows like floating clouds. It's very beautiful. mapledia
Most of us in a warmer climate will have greening issues with the more commonly sold and nursery grown Ukigumo. We had the Japanese form from a well known nursery in Japan and I can safely state after being around this form of Ukigumo for almost 30 years it can be quite inconsistent with its coloring from year to year. We did some experimenting with light, nutrients and with soil pH to see if we could influence the amount of variegation we could see. With some trials we felt we could impact the amount or influence the variegated colors but only for the short term. We gave up selling Ukigumo around here as a wholesale Maple, still sold it retail as we felt we could not compete with some of the Oregon growers that were able to sell their form of this Maple that was able to hold its color longer than ours could. We always felt that Ukigumo does so much better colorized in an acid soil which meant for us, keep it in a container, but once planted in the ground we lost a lot of the variegation by around the fifth to seventh year. I know for some people once these trees go green in color with slight variegation they do not ever seem to get the high white and cream coloration back. For some Maple varieties this is normal in that when young and juvenile they tend to be much more variegated than they are as mature and adult trees. Mr. Vertrees alluded to this fact in his writings and those of us that have seen the same trees he wrote about knew exactly what he was talking about. I can say that the Oregon form of Ukigumo from certain Oregon nurseries is the form of this Maple that I would recommend for others to have, rather than the Japanese form that we had and sold for many years. What we saw from our tree grown in high light (sun) revealed more greening issues than the Oregon form would. I came away from Oregon nurseries many times wondering why our Maples of their form of Ukigumo never looked as good as theirs do in rather short order. Even as less as two years later we saw less variegation from our trees of theirs than the same aged Maples did in let's say Eugene and Boring, Oregon. The Western Garden Book assesses micro climate zones for a reason and lists where certain plants will grow better and even look better than other zones will. One thing we have to keep in mind is that cooler zones than us around here with Western Garden Book zones 8 and zone 9 can have variegated Maples that look better longer than we do. I know after visiting several foothill nurseries in a WGB zone 7 that their variegated Maples consistently held their color longer than ours do in a zone 8 and zone 9, even from Maples they got from us. It is a telling story, albeit aggravating at times, to see just how a Ukigumo from us looks in Placerville, Palo Alto, Woodside, Santa Rosa, even Eugene, Oregon and Olympia, Washington, than the same Maple of ours looks like for us during the growing season here. Jim
Just to add: My Ukigumo was lackluster last year, mostly green. Didn't touch it and it came back all nice this year. I attached the pic. It is a good plant for me, with little if any dieback. Proably 5 years old now.
I had not realized there were distinct different forms of Ukigumo until Mr. Shep enlightened me on this issue. His post was wonderful, very insightful and informative, and I've been mulling over what he said. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I have 3 Ukigumos, and all are white/cream with the green dappling normally seen on this cultivar. I've not had any reversion (and hope never to have this), but all my plants come from Oregon. And like Mr. Shep stated, the Oregon forms held color better, for whatever reason. Thank you, Mr. Shep, for a really wonderful educational post. I appreciate your willingness to share your expertise. mapledia
Paxi, That's exactly what mine did this year. Very green with little variegation. I will wait to see if its better next year...
Leaves on some of my ukigumo have vertually no green color to them. They will pick up more of a pink color than a green as they move into summer.
I had not notices this thread in my visits to the forum earlier in the spring but wanted to add a comment on my observations. I thought it was quite interesting two weeks back at our spring maple gathering that four people asked about ‘Ukigumo’ not having muck variegation this year. I have two plants in the garden that were both acquired from east coast nurseries. One is 15 years old and the other 13 and both were about five gallon trees when acquired. My trees have never shown a full white appearance that is sometimes seen but have consistently held nice variegation. This year there is little to no variegation and I attribute that to the unusual winter we had on the east coast. My trees are not fertilized and I have an irrigation system so water is not an issue. We had warmer than normal fall temps and then starting in December lots of snow. We average about 2 to 3 inches of snow at the coast and this year we had six feet. We also did not have very cold temperatures in the winter. That combined with a very warm start to spring, temps in the nineties and high eighties would be my guess as a possible cause. Spring leaf out was two to three weeks early in my area this year. In the fifteen years of growing this cultivar I think this is the third time this has occurred. I agree with Justin that this is not reversion but just a bad year for the characteristics of this cultivar. I have never pruned out the green leaves and it returns to normal coloration on its own. I find it very interesting that people in all areas are seeing the same results on this cultivar this year. Ed
