I was looking to place some dwarf maples around my new pond. In picture 1, I was going to go with Murasaki Kyohime. The tree would go to left of the pine. Red Pygmy is behind the spot and Omureyama is to the left of it. In picture 2, I am lost. There is a Sekimori maple directly behind the spot I was looking to place the maple. The maple would go in the hole dug out in the middle of the rocks. If anyone has any ideas, please share. Thank You in advance Mike
I just planted a good sized Beni Hoshi this fall. Maybe I will move it in the spring to that area. That area gets full sun, will Beni Hoshi be okay in full sun? Thanks for the reply Mike
Beni hoshi will do pretty well in the full sun. I have seen some 15 year old plants grown in larger nursery containers in full sun on top of back weed fabric. The plants will bronze some, so don't expect the red to hold. I don't remember seeing any leaf dessciation, but some margin burn. Honestly, for their location they looked very good. The trade-off is that in shade, the green will really come through in this plant and the fall colors will be poor. I think you will be better off if you push the sun exposure rather than baby it. Good Luck. There are lots of other semi-dwarfs in Brandt's Dwarf, Carlis Corner Broom, Elizabeth, Sara -D (more green), Shaina. I consider many of these equivalent for disscussion purposes, as it will be a matter of what you can find. A nice red leaved matsumarae is Azuma murasaki if you are not growing it or Oregon Sunset. Both larger than the so-called brooms. MJH
Pixie is one that may work for you. It is similar to Bloodgood but won't get much larger that 6'. Shaina is another one of about the same size, but is a little more orange than red.
My favorite dwarf is 'Beni Hemi'. It stays small and does well in the sun. Most of the pictures that you see don't do the colors justice. The leaves at the tips of the branches stay red well into fall.
Placing a Maple that close to the Pine is the bigger problem as the spot almost precludes an upright growing Maple as the Maple and the Pine will compete for space. What you want is either a low growing, spreading dwarf like Kiyohime akame, Koi kiyohime or a Kashima yatsubusa, a low grafted, low growing and spreading dissectum such as Ornatum or Red Select, a low growing, willowy and spreading dwarf like Otome zakura, or a low growing, mounding semi-dwarf such as Jiro shidare or true form Bonfire that makes a nice, almost square shaped (4' x 4-6' ) mound for that spot. A "true bonsai" dwarf, mounding plant may be ideal and Shishigashira no yatsubusa will work fine there. If red, pink, orange or bronze red color is more important than shape and eventual size, then Aratama as Michael suggests is the right Maple. A good choice also is Beni yatsubusa or even the true form Wilson's Pink dwarf. The old Whitney Red may not be a bad choice either or the more commonly seen semi-dwarf form of Otome zakura. Even a Beni otome, Ueno homare or Ueno yama can work there also. Any of the above along with the names already mentioned will work for the second spot but if it were me I would go with a low growing Ornatum, a low grafted Red Select or a Jiro shidare under the Sekimori. Although of the two spots the second location is better for the Murasaki kiyohime, Kiyohime or even a Kurohime, Hime yatsubusa, Otohime, Chiba, Kashima, Ueno yatsubusa, Coonara Pygmy, Sharp's Pygmy or even a Kamagata. If you like color go with a Hime tsuma gaki or go with a Kaga o beni or a Manyo no sato if you can find any of them. A lot depends on availability. I have been referencing true forms which are not always seen or have been made available from our nursery sources yet. Beni hime cannot handle our warm temperatures here but there is a semi-dwarf form that has been around in nurseries since the early 90's that is much better suited for us. We had both forms in the Maple collection. The true dwarf form is a natural bonsai plant and has leaves about thumbnail size and smaller. They cannot handle sustained foggy weather, warm or cold winds as the leaves will just shrivel up on us big time. It is a choice plant for collections if we protect it from the hot afternoon sun and wind. I've been through 3 of them, lost two in containers, one young (about 5 years later), one older (about 12 years later), hedged my bet and planted the last one before the two container plants died out. It has been in the ground for 18 years and is only about 3' tall and about 4' wide. Jim
Here is some advice to better learn the dwarf types. I recommend having the Vertrees 2nd edition Japanese Maples book and study how Mr. Vertrees grouped the Japanese Maples into their corresponding groups. There are some crossovers in that some of the unusual feature Maples are dwarf forms and some are semi-dwarf in nature. Another thing to consider is that it can be argued that any Japanese Maple that will grow under 20' tall at maturity can be considered a semi-dwarf. I did not make this generalization so either save or point your comments to someone else. For how I learned these plants the Maple has to be under 15' for me to consider it a semi-dwarf and for a long time I was told no taller than 12' but we have some of these plants due to our number of growth cycles in a year that can indeed get up to 15 or more feet tall when many areas only see them get up to 9 feet tall at maturity. Another thing to consider is that not all of the trees Mr. Vertrees references or shows photos of were his plants which gives rise to slight errors in the descriptions when the information was edited. Then when some of that information was paraphrased in the newer edition of the Vertrees/Gregory book those errors of enthusiasm as they were not made on purpose become compounded even more. It is a risk the author takes when they write about a plant they do not know very well and have not ever grown and in some cases never actually seen. To apply Japanese Maples in a landscape requires us to have knowledge of the eventual sizes at maturity. We have to know will the shape we want the plant to be for us work in that particular spot. Going out an buying names of Maples will not help us here as the name of the Maple itself is the least helpful to us. It helps to know the name of the Maple but so many times the plant we are buying is not what we end up getting. The plant may be similar to the name on the tag but there can be great disparity in what the Maple will end up becoming for us for size and shape. Bonfire originated from a California nursery and is not mainstream in the nursery trade. The first Maple to come into the US of this series long before Europe had this Maple that did become mainstream was Seigai and now no one seems to know what this Maple looks like other than some select people in Japan. Later Akaji nishiki came in from Japan and it became the nursery industry standard plant but is marketed much of the time as Bonfire. The growth habits of these three Maples are all indeed different as one can get up to about 9-12 feet tall, one will only get up to about 6 feet tall at maturity and then start to grow wider and one will be a blocky 4 foot tall by 4-6 feet wide at its maturity. Oddly enough the 6' tall form is the faster grower when young and then fills in later once it reaches a certain height for it. You have to see it grown in more than one location such as in a few areas in Oregon and perhaps Washington as well and in Japan to know how this Maple behaves. In regards to Beni hime let me point out that the true dwarf form has been confined to collections. This form has not been propagated for resale and when it was propagated it was destined for select collections here in the US and in Japan only. What we see on the Esveld web site is the semi-dwarf form which is the more commonly seen form for a rather rare Maple to start with. It is the semi-dwarf form that was propagated in the nursery by grafting, not the true dwarf form as that form was only propagated by cuttings to retain the dainty and delicate size of it. Don Kleim did outlet some of the dwarf form cuttings to a few Oregon grower/collectors but they had real problems grafting this form also as their scion takes were a paltry percentage and then when grafted onto non dwarfing rootstock their plants no longer were the true dwarf but became the semi-dwarf form instead. The leaves became much larger in size and so did the size of the plants. When some of these plants can get up to 9-12 feet tall they are no longer a dwarf. Jim
My source for my 'Beni Hemi' scion wood is 35 years old and 30" tall. It has done very well in the heat of Atlanta, GA in near full sun. My grafts onto standard palmatum rootstock seem to exhibit the same traits as the scion source although I have only been grafting it for 6 years or so. The leaves are about the size of a dime. My grafting success has been good. I believe that the problem that most people have in grafting this dwarf is that the scion caliper is very small. I find that it is easier to graft it on young rootstock with a caliper of 1/8" or so. Dale
I had not thought of using Kamagata in that spot, but I think that would be quite nice. The plant is pretty tolerant and if one finds the right shape plant it you be ideal. We got ours as a liner and the leader was bent just a bit above the union, to almost 90 degrees, so that it grows outward. Next to a pond, this shape is very nice. Our Aratama is also grafted very low and has a couple strong leaders that give it a strong lateral habit at a young age. People often think of dissectums for overhaning ponds and such, but a dwarf or semi-dwarf maple with the right form can be striking also. I saw that your Beni hoshi is pretty upright now, as are the ones I have seen, very tall shrubs. Now the one I have has a main leader that is arching outward. The grower said he would have clipped it back for scion wood, but I have let it go. While in time, it will fill in to be more upright, I like the idea of being able to prune it to keep its "alternative" shape. The dwarf forms that Jim mentions are quite ideal where dwarfs are needed, but I think he is correct that many of the true dwarf forms of popular maples are hard to find. I have yet to find Bonfire in Oregon, we don't see Beni yatsubusa sold, and when we run into a Wilson's Pink or Otome zarkura, that is a great likelihood it will not be the correct plant. I think this speaks to the fact that many of the dwarf forms of maples, like other maples, can look so similar at certain times of the year that they are hard to tell apart. Once mixed up, it is rare that they are straightened out. In the dead of this past summer I was talking with a grower about two plants he had, one bought as Akaji nishiki and the other as Wilson's Pink. While we tried to sort it out, they both looked the same to me. I think it is quite likely they were. Dale, A 30ft Beni hime? Wow. Maybe some plant steroids in its past. The small Beni hime I have has only one desire and that is to head toward the ground. All of its long slender chutes have a very lateral and downward curvature. It will be interesting to see when it decides to grow upward.
Beni hime came about as a sport from another Maple in Japan. Don Kleim did not get his plant until 1977, the same time he got the dwarf form Otome zakura. The original Okukuji nishiki that came into the US in the early 80's was also a dwarf and the one thing all three of these plants have in common is we changed them by grafting them. To keep them dwarfed down, as they looked when they came into the US, they had to be propagated by cuttings. I'd like to see some photos of the larger* Maple Dale referenced. I should know it from seeing some photos of it. The sourcing of Japanese Maples in the South becomes real important to know as the original plants all revert back to one of four nurseries. Two on the East Coast (Pennsylvania) and two on the West Coast (California). Another primary source for collection material was in Maryland but that source was not a nursery per say but was more specialized in japonicum and their related species forms of palmatum type Maples. The original filicifolium came into that source back in the late teens as an example. Yes, Michael, I know about Akaji nishiki and Wilson's Pink dwarf in certain locales in Oregon. If people knew the growth habits of both Maples then they could concentrate on the shapes of the leaves and the colors of the foliage in a growing season. I will admit though when we are dealing with plants 7 years or less in age it can be rather troublesome on people to sort out some of these Maples without having a bona fide stock plant to use as a base. This is precisely the area where some of the Maples became misnamed as people wanted wood from a grower/collector to graft but they had no "control" plant, a stock plant on hand to base or compare their grafted plants to, to confirm or deny what they had. Then when the wood got mixed up and the labels on the wood lost during shipment it became a nightmare scenario for some people with some of the names. I will say that there were some collectors that knew something was not right and went back through and tracked names down, drove down to J.D.'s more than once to see his plants to better know what their grafted plants were but many of the mom and pop operations that became interested in having Japanese Maples after J.D.'s book came out did not do that but instead relied on others to tell them what they had. When someone told them their plant was an Asahi zuru when it was a Versicolor what name do you think the Maple was sold as in their nursery? Even the old form Asahi zuru is seldom seen today (the variant form of it is more commonly seen) but the Waka momiji variegated which has much more pink in the leaves in the Spring and more pink during the growing season with little to no white in the leaves is still around, thank goodness but online it is also misnamed. To better know which is the right plant a person has to go back the original sources that had the plant come in from Japan. J.D. got his Asahi zuru from someone else as an example but he did have the right Maple. Jim * I messed up on the height of Dale's plant also in regards to yweride's comment to mjh1676. There is another dwarf that came to us out of Japan similar to Beni hime but it is exceptionally rare to find anywhere.
mjh1676, you have misread dales post, 30 inches not 30 feet. As far as a height of any grafted maple it really depends on a number of factors, such as height of the graft union and if staking or pruning has been done. Beni hime is one of my personal favorite plants no doubt; the largest one I have seen is about 30 years old and is 4 feet tall, this plant being from a low graft of course.
Hi, What about Baby lace? Michael has a very nice pic of it in the gallery. I saw this cultivar at a local nursery and it was really cute. I would've bought, but the 1 gal. pot had $50 written on it!...and the tree was TINY. Still...it was real cute. That might fit your spot and give you the color you're looking for? Layne
Sorry Dale, If I look at the LCD monitor too long my contacts go south and then the " looks much like '. I all make more sense now. Contacts still giving me trouble. Layne, I like Baby Lace a great deal as far as a dwarf dissected form, but I don't think I would put it in the open like that. Something with more substance in the leaf would make a better statement in my mind. Now if we could protect Baby Lace a little in the landscape, then go for it. It is pretty tough, but I am not sure what it can handle. And you are right, they typically are small--growing only a few inches a year. The other problem I have seen with them is for some reason they don't force a very good root system. They seem to be a bit unstable in the trunk and near the soil line for some years. It doesn't make sense, but it appears to happen often.
Hi Michael, One of the interesting things at this nursery where I saw this Baby lace was that it was one of the very few maples that survived the later summer heatwave we experienced here in Los Angeles. It was a mild summer and my potted maples were doing well even after I moved to a sunnier west facing location. But then we got hit with a short, intense heatwave in late summer that did a number on my and friends' potted maples. The Japanese maples around town that grow in the ground faired much better...better even than last summer, even after the heatwave. However, all the maples at this nursery showed signs of heat stress. My friend was so disappointed saying that just a few weeks ago all the maples looked magnificent. They had unbelievable Butterfly and Shishigashira in HUGE boxes...that were burned. The only maples that looked good were the Sango kaku in boxes and plastic pots and this cute little 1 gal. Baby lace. I don't know the summertime conditions where Mike is in PA, but the sun and heat shouldn't be as intense as it can get here in LA...at least I think. Layne
Here's my choice: Coonora Pygmy. Takes the heat and sun better than any dwarf and is spectacular in fall. Its small palmate leaf would look good next to that prickly pine. Shaina is also good. Oregon Sunset is also nice but would need pruning to keep it smaller, it grows all summer in warm sun. I also like Mikawa yatsubusa but would be hard to find one of any size.
Coonara Pygmy is a great choice. Metro, why didn't I think of that? The little leaves will make a great texture contast with the pine.
I would vote for a Red Filigree in the space there in the second pic. It would have a fine lace cascading effect over the rocks and the wood retains a burgundy red color in winter. Nice area you have going there.
Beni ubi gohan is another good choice for a dwarf red. It is a linear lobe, supposedly smaller in size than Red Pigmy.
