I am not a maple expert. However, I have been watching the sugar maple seedlings and have noticed seedlings with pink leaves, one each year, for three years in a row. No matter what I did, the squirrels always got them. I found none last year and though it was over. This year we had an abundance of seedlings, five of which have pink leaves. They appear not to make enough chlorophyll to grow, and have stopped growing and appear rather weak. I need someone near Detroit who can graft these onto something so that I can eventually get seeds off of the pink selections. I want to keep this odd gene pool alive. Can anyone reliably graft these tiny seedlings onto something? I have never had success grafting.
No, they all died and no more came up in 2004. I'll watch for 2005, but it seems nobody in North America is interested enough in new maple cultivars enough to graft them. Oh well.
Al, Put some kind of fencing around your seedlings so the squirrels can't get to them. I don't want to discourage you, but the fact that the seedlings die on their own roots doesn't bode well for them being grafted either. If this mutation can not survive well, you know, survival of the fittest will cull the weak mutations naturallly. Good luck though! Layne
