Hello, I purchased an Acer listed simply as "Acer cascade" as it seemed too nice to pass up. However, it definitely isn't growing in a typical cascade fashion. It's 7-7.5' tall with largely vertical growth from all of the branches off of the main stem. When I compare it to my Acer palmatum Cascade Gold its entirely different. Does anyone have any idea what it might be? I'm still relatively new to keeping Acers so I'm really not sure. In the last month I've gone from owning 2 to now 17 different cultivars but not one of them resembles this one. Very addictive to keep. I'm sure someone here will know though! I've attached a few pictures. Thank you for your time!
Good evening Jake and welcome to the maples forum. Now your question about what you have is a bit hit and miss IMO. The reason being is that I know that a lot of Acer palmatum 'Cascade' is grown from seed and not grafted. If yours is one of those, then it might not run true to a cascading form. This does happen with seedlings, they are often different to the parent tree. So yes you have a maple that was most probably a seedling from a Cascade tree, but it's doing what it wants. That's the best I can offer re an ID I'm afraid.
Thank you for your reply! I didn't realise that, that's interesting. In which case it most likely is from seed then. I'll leave it to do what it wants and see what happens. It'll be cool to see how it develops this year!
Whether it's Acer palmatum (or Acer japonicum) 'cascade', it should have a weeping port, and I can't see that is the case with yours. I'm afraid it was mislabelled.
... and I think that selling a non-grafted maple as "cascade" (?) is a scam. If you were still European, I could send you one at least as good as this one for half the price you paid for it, huh huh...
Thanks for your reply! It did seem odd labelling it cascade. My only experience with cascades is Acer palmatum Cascade Gold which is entirely different. Picture attached of mine before I repotted it. They couldn't look more different. Definitely made me skeptical about this purchase. Admittedly I really liked the growth on it though and it was a bargain in terms of price. £50. Which in my area, finding an Acer even close to that size normally costs me twice that (unless I'm looking in the wrong places). Maybe I should be looking further afield!
Do add your photo of Cascade Gold to this thread Jake. Acer palmatum 'Cascade Gold' It is becoming a very popular cultivar on the forum. Yours looks a very healthy specimen.
Acer palmatum 'Cascade' Tree Might want to look at this ??? They have being selling these for quite a while now and you can clearly see the difference between this cultivar ? and the cascade gold , ruby etc. Seems to be two separate cultivars ??
Wow, that sounds/looks incredibly similar to my new one! May be spot on with that. Even comparing this screenshot of the leaf from your link to pictures of the leaves on mine (ignore the bee) they look essentially identical!
Equally, if you scroll down on that link nearer the bottom it shows examples of meter tall specimens which have an identical growth structure/pattern to mine.
Something does seem a little fishy in all this. It looks like an Acer palmatum seedling, which is a very nice tree, no problems. But as soon as there are single quotes around the name, it is a cultivar, meant to be genetically identical to the parent, and so definitely not a seedling. So selling seedlings as A. palmatum 'Cascade' is very misleading. On the site, they are selling a plant called 'Westonbirt seeedling' as "rare and unusual"! Can't say I'm on board with that. Seedlings from Westonbirt can be great, but hardly rare or unusual.
