Is anyone familiar with 'Azuma murasaki'? Or any other Matsumurae type Japanese maples that have downy hair on the leaves when they emerge in spring? I ask because I am trying to identify two maples that I bought (via mail order) as young grafts of 'Shigure bato' six years ago. Of course they were not 'Shigure bato', and as they were part of a larger order they were initially overlooked with the thought that maybe the leaves would look right the following year. And when the next year came they did not. Fast forward to this year and I decided to do some research and try to identify which cultivar I had been sold. An email to the supplier (one of the largest nurseries grafting JMs in the UK) was ignored, but I did notice that 'Shigure bato' is no longer included in their catalogue. I browsed through many websites over the last few months, visited Westonbirt arboretum, and leafed through Vertrees 2nd edition many times; I found many cultivars that seemed similar to mine but not exactly the same, until I took a closer look at the descriptions of Azuma murasaki and found it had a fine pubescence on the new foliage, which matched my examples. I have since looked at some photographs in the gallery here and on various sites, and believe that I have made a positive identification (also this cultivar is listed in the catalogue of the original nursery), but there are not as many images available of this cultivar as there are of some more popular varieties and it is difficult to be certain. I will not get a chance to view an example of 'Azuma murasaki' in person anytime soon, and this is why I decided to start this thread, and ask anyone who knows 'Azuma murasaki' if they could please look at the following pictures and see if they recognise the maple pictured. As I have two examples, I placed one where it is mainly in the sun and the other in a much more shaded location, and took photographs of both over the last few months. Each group of pictures was taken about a month apart. See next post for pictures please
Here are the photographs, please take a look. (Edit - the plant described as "in sun" gets about 9 hours direct sun per day and the one "in shade" does get some direct sun, maybe about 3 hours late morning/midday.) Picture no.1 taken on 20th of April, 2 & 3 on 22nd of April: Second group taken 22nd of May; 4 & 5 plant in sun; 6 in shade: 28th of June; 7 sun; 8 & 9 shade: 22nd of July; 10 and 11 sun; 12 shade: Thanks for looking, Maf
Here are a few pix of my Azuma Murasaki. Yours looks similar to mine, although the serrations on your leaves are more pronounced, and your leaves have slighter fatter lobes than mine. Ignore color differences. I moved mine to a sunnier location, and it turned much more red within 3 weeks. http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff60/sasquatchmtb/japanese maples/MaplesMay2009412Large.jpg
Thanks, the leaf form looks to me to be very similar. My plant tends to have variable width lobes, with the leaves towards the ends of the branches having narrower lobes than most of the leaves I pictured, which were mainly the largest ones. With more shade mine also stays pretty green, and the flowers look similar to how I remember them (didn't flower this year). - - (P.S. nobody has jumped in and said I am mistaken in my identification of this maple, hopefully that means I have it right. I'm at least confident enough to write out two labels saying 'Azuma murasaki' and stick them in the relevant pots. The pictures posted in the gallery by MJH a few years ago of the emerging spring foliage are what really convinced me, so thanks go out to him, hopefully he will read this one day and smile.)
