Hello, I am new here but love Japanese Maples. Yesterday I bought two. I bought what was marked as a Wou Nishiki, at the Japanese Garden sale. However.. trying to find info on it on how best to place it..ie requirements..it seems I might not have what was on the tag if I go by the photos on this forum. Here are a couple of photos of my Tree. Could you please tell me the correct cultivar name? http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i51/Bergere/trees/othercloseup.jpg http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i51/Bergere/trees/otherfull.jpg http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i51/Bergere/trees/otheronea.jpg
Looks fine for Wou Nishiki to me The leaf colour is consistent with the new leaf colour of this cultivar
Unfortunately, neither the color or leaf shape is consitent with Wou nishiki which will have a deeply divided, small, coarsely serrated, and usually partially red or rose colored leaf. The red in the margins is common with spring emergence and expansion and dissipates as the growing season lengthens. Here are a few different stages of the leaves on Wou nishiki.
I have seen the Wou many times that is why I asked you all here. The name and tree just did not match. This is a beautiful Japanese Maple but is one of the ones I can't seem to place. Galt, do you have any idea which one mine is?
OK,, did email the nursery that was on the tag. Basically I asking for them to confirm if this was indeed the Wou or not. I figured a tag got switched by a worker or a customer. Is not impossible. It can't be a sport because it is grafted. This is the info I recived. What do you all think? All Japanese maples will evolve in the appearance of their foliage in the course of a season, and many will differ quite widely from "gallery photographs" due to not only environmental conditions, but also to what we call "juvenile foliage". For an extreme example, the well-known variety "Butterflies" is known for variegated foliage, but young trees will invariably produce branches with over-sized and ordinary-colored leaves. Many people regard these as "reversions" and prune them out, only to find more being produced the following year. They are not reversions, but merely juvenile foliage - the very same branches, if left alone, will produce type-variegated leaves on small side-branches the following year. I don't think this is the case with this "Wou Nishiki". Rather I think it is responding to our unusually cold spring by producing leaves that are not as deeply cut or red-shaded as normal. It is quite typical for them to be this "bright, almost yellow, green" (Vertrees, _Japanese Maples_) when they first emerge, developing the reddish tint of the leaf-edges tends to come with some heat, so I would expect that on later foliage, although it is ephemeral. The light green is more common. I've looked at the tree in our garden, and it looks identical, as we would expect, except that it is showing the slightest of shaded edges to the leaves. Expect it to become a narrow, upright tree to perhaps ten feet in twenty years, with profuse small twiggy branches
I agree with the nursery. I was going to suggest that you wait and see how the tree develops before forming a solid opinion One of the difficulties in the States (not so much yet in Europe) is the tendency to market a tree as a named cultivar when it is really just a seedling from that cultivar, and possibly the other parent is different. Very few Japanese maples come true from seed for this reason. That is another possibility where the leaf shape and colour is slightly different at this stage, although NOT in this case as it is a grafted plant. I bow to Galt's superior knowledge on Japanese maples, but I still see the serrated deeply cut leaf of Wou Nishiki (albeit not as serrated on the edges as his own plants) and obviously at this stage without the pink edges, The new leaf colour is otherwise consistant however.
Thank you for the info. So this will be one of the "Wait and see" Maples! Just means I will have to go buy more. <VBG>
