I love that campestre! Glad to see the davidii is still extant, I had to pull out a couple that died in the wet. Was just looking at Bi-hō (both the old spelling from Nakajima, and the new, compliant name: 美峰 means "Beautiful Summit" -- hoo and hou are just meaningless rōmaji variations) a couple of days ago. I should really plant it, in a 35l it wants nothing so much as ground. But I noticed that the bark was discolored with a blackish tinge, as we see here on many smooth barks, apples, etc. It scrubs off easily, though I haven't spent a lot of time polishing trees, it has made me peel some Betula utilis. I wonder what it is, an airborn fungus, or some sort of dirt? There's virtually no industry downwind, either south or west, where the stuff builds up. And we have tons of lichens, so the air seems clean enough. As it happens, I assembled some Snakebark pictures for TMSBI's instagram last week, here are a few. (Celebrating the installation of fiber, my bandwidth has increased by 3000X!) As Alain's post shows, though, there's tons of great interest in maple bark beyond the usual Snakebarks. -E
Yes, 'Arakawa' is one of the few J. maples that shows a cork bark. The rough bark develops on branches aged 3-4 years. 'Hubbles super cork', 'Ibo nishiki', and 'Nishiki Gawa' are others.
Yes, there are only 9 in total, out of the thousands of cultivars. Such JMs belong to the Pinebark Group. Seedlings of Ara-kawa and Nishiki-gawa are sometimes Pinebark Group themselves/, so it's fun to grow them. With respect to my friend Alain, the second word in Japanese maples from Japan is never capitalized unless it is a proper name. "gawa" is a standard pronunciation change (rendaku) of "kawa" meaning river, so that the whole name Nishiki-gawa means Brocade of River, a nice thing to visualize. Demonstrating how confusing these names can be, 'Ara-kawa' means "Rough bark", although this kawa is a homophone of the kawa meaning river, it has a different kanji character which tells us the true meaning. The excellent Pinebark Group 'Alan's Gold' which combines golden spring/summer leaves with the rough bark, is now available in Europe, good news as it's one of the most interesting new cultivars. I've never seen 'Hubble's Super Cork', not sure if it has made it over yet. Cheers, -E
