I just wanted to share a few pictures of some baby maples of mine. I have collected a absurd amount of baby maples this year and some of them look quite a bit different from the others. Don't worry, i'm not going to start naming, propagating, and selling these. I just wanted to share my excitement. The fifth picture should have a pink color edging the leaf but my camera didn't seem to capture the true color.
I see the same thing in my little maples. They are all "green japanese maples", but their look vary quite a bit. Where did you get the seeds? M.
I have long marvelled at the variety available in seedlings. No wonder Japanese maples are highly addictive .....
Are you kidding me? Nothing like a smooth glass of Johnny Walker Black with a dash of 7up though ...On a day where the sunshine meets the heat and where it's difficult to see as the sun is so blinding. 'No wonder people grow them from seed', to paraphrase... Dax
Wonderful photos, banjoboy! Thanks so much for sharing them. I love the sheer wonderment of germinating seeds & keeping meticulous records of the matrilineal line without knowing what new alchemy the patrilineal pollen has brought to the mix. I am told it can take up to 8 years to get the genetics truly expressed. The variables of new genetics and the subtleties of microclimates make the generativity of germinating my personal favorite part of cultivar collecting. I just noticed a 2005 seedling of Koto no ito has developed a strong red blush on the last 1/3rd of the leaves. That difference came out of nowhere in a few days. In Peter Gregory's new pocket guide book, he mentions that Tiger Rose a favorite green reticulate of mine was a seedling of the red Azuma murasaki. Who would have thought it except Nature. There is a lot of naughty mingling happening in our gardens & how rich we are.
unfortunately i don't remember where i got all of my seedlings from. the 4th was under a corallinum and the 5th one was collected near a seigai (bonfire). Most were collected in a garden with a least 20 different mature japanese maples nearby. I also gathered maybe 2 dozen sango kaku seedlings along with a handful of viridis babies. I'm excited to see how many develop interesting characteristics.
While eveyone is talking about seedlings. Is it possible to get a natural dwarf from seed? I have this tiny seedling from Osakazuki which has four sets of healthy leaves, but it tiny. I don't know what to think. Any thoughts? Kay Dye PS Your seedlings sure look healthy and the leaves beautiful. Mine look all scruffy, curled, dried out. This is my first year growing seeds and I think my potting mix was too light and they dried out too much. Do you think that sounds reasonable? I have moved them out into my polyhouse now and put them in a new mix, so hopefully the second growth will come out better. They are just starting to do that now.
Runts often get thrown out at production nurseries, actually many kinds of trees produce slow-growing or weak seedlings. In nature these would get crowded out or killed in some other way, so we seldom see them in the wild either. These two situations would tend to produce a false impression of a species only or mostly producing vigorous seedlings. Where there is a long-practiced saving and nurturing of dwarves and other variants, such as in Japan quite a number of them will have become selected and circulated over time. Thus all the dwarf, cutleaf and variegated Japanese maples that are widely known and grown today.
