In Philly we have a City Gardens Contest run by the PHS. It's not especially rigorous or hard core it's more of a community fun and education type of event. Usually I enter it. The judges visit and check out your garden, ask questions and make notes and take photos. They are always amazed to see all the maple trees squeezed into my tiny urban, soiless garden. I've never had a judge who was very familiar with JMs. Usually the judges end up listening to me explaining a few of the interesting things about JMs especially regarding cultivar vs species and container culture. This year I want to create a flyer with some info so that the judges might retain more of what JMs are about. I was wondering what folks here think are a few of the fascinating aspects of JMs that could be described in a sentence or 2. I thought that the number of cultivare in the checklist would be interesting to a novice and also the difference between how Japanese maples are used in Japan (Japanese Gardens) vs collectors gardens elsewhere. What do others think would be worth sharing? Lastly I thought that explaining the variability within palmatum would be very interesting. I would like to explain this to the judges but I need someone to explain it to me first. How does it happen that there is so much variation within the group? Appreciate your thoughts. Gil
hi Gil in this forum there is the section Japanese garden,ask here too, i see in Botanical garden of Rome that in japanese garden grown only species not cultivar... ciao
This is a bit palmatum-centric, but I might be nice to visually lay out some of the basic ways that JM differ (e.g leaf structure - with the basic leaf types, weeping vs. upright, variegated, etc). Studying some of the nursery websites (eg. how they divide and highlight their maples) may offer some interesting ways to present your maples. That is after all what they are after - trying to showcase the variety of maples. Thumbing thru the first couple of chapters of vertrees can always offer some inspiration. Maybe too competive/hierarchical, but a list of your 10 current favorite maples (and more importanly what you really value about them) may be some fun. post a copy of the flyer or pic of presentation when you are done!
It may also be fun to pair some poems (ancient japanese or otherwise) with a maple that reflects the poem well: here are a couple examples (google japanese maple poem) http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/cs/summer_07/feature_05.html http://www.wayofmaple.com/maple_inspiration.html page 10 of vertrees (from forward by hideo suzuki) there must be several from copies of the maple society newsletter
This has always intrigued me too. I remember reading somewhere that the amount of variation within Palmatum was due to it being a relatively "young" species in evolutionary terms. I'll try and dig up the reference later when I get home.
Thanks for your suggestions. Regarding the proliferation of variations, I found that Vertrees gives a brief sketch of his thoughts on pg. 8, second edition.
Unfortunately I couldn't find the reference to Acer Palmatum being a young species so it might not even be true. Sorry. I did find this interesting quote concerning the genetic variation of Acer Palmatum: (From an article by Jon Ardle in the RHS journal The Garden, May 2006. http://www.rhs.org.uk/learning/publications/pubs/garden0506/maples.asp)