Japanese maples come in hundreds
of cultivars, each offering a unique
combination of size, growth habit,
leaf shape, color and seasonal
interest. The leaves of the katsura
Japanese maple (Acer palmatum
‘Katsura’) emerge yellow with an
orange edge in spring, then fade to
green in the summer before turning
brilliant gold and orange in the fall.
This specimen will reach 20 feet tall
and was grown at Eshraghi Nursery,
Cornelius, Ore.
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JULY 2009
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Curt Kipp
A tree
for all
occasions
Japanese maples are grown
in so many shapes, sizes and
colors, they’ll fit in almost
anywhere
By Elizabeth Petersen
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JULY 2009
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No wonder Japanese maples are
so popular with gardeners, landscapers
and designers. Undemanding by nature
and appropriately sized for today’s pri-
vate gardens, they offer aesthetic excellence at every turn and an astonishing
array of looks, colors and textures.
Growers in Oregon produce hundreds of thousands of Japanese maples
(Acer palmatum and related species
A. japonicum and A. shirasawanum)
every year. They supply the U.S. and
Canada with seedlings of well-known
cultivars, including the popular red
A.p. ‘Bloodgood’ and coral-barked A.p.
‘Sango Kaku’.
29
Picks
from the
Pros
▲
It isn’t hard to get growers to talk about plants. The
tough part is getting them to narrow down their list
of favorites to just a handful. Here are some of the
varieties our sources recommended:
Norm Jacobs
Joel Johnson
Arbutus Garden Arts
Carlton, Ore.
Eshraghi Nursery
Cornelius, Ore.
Acer palmatum
‘Bonfire’ – This small,
upright tree has glossy
leaves that emerge
bright red and fade
to green. It has a nice
multicolor effect that
lasts all summer. The
leaves turn brilliant red
in fall. Dense growth to
ten feet.
Eagle claw maple (Acer
palmatum ‘Kamagata’)
– Kamagata’s small leaves
with long angular lobes
emerge with a red margin
on a light green leaf. By
midsummer, the color
is bright green before
turning intense orange
and yellow in fall. This
slow grower has a soft
appearance. Dwarf dense
habit to ten feet.
Acer palmatum ‘Kiyo
hime’ – Small, star
shaped leaves emerge on
this vigorous but dense,
compact grower. Its rich
green leaves emerge with
bright red-orange margins
around yellow centers. Its
fall color is yellow-orange.
Grows to six feet.
Acer palmatum ‘Aka
shigatatsu sawa’
– Wider than it is
tall, with a strongly
horizontal aspect.
Color changes from
what you see in the
photo, through green
with white and red
highlights, to end in
fall with a fire engine
red display. It needs a
light shade to perform
best.
Floating cloud
maple (Acer
palmatum
‘Ukigumo’) – The
“floating cloud”
thrives in exposures
from full sun to
deep shade despite
extensive white
variegation.
Acer palmatum
var. dissectum
‘Tamukeyama’ – A
very old red noted for its
ability to hold its color
in full sun and summer
heat, and for its blackpurple bark, which
gives it a nice sculptural
presence in the winter
garden, especially in
snow or frost.
Jim Schmidt
Don Schmidt Nursery
Boring, Ore.
Lion’s head maple
(Acer palmatum
‘Shishigashira’) – The
lion’s head maple grows
slowly and stays compact,
to 15 feet by 10 feet.
Its small, bright green,
densely packed leaves
curl tightly against the
branches and turn brilliant
gold with red and pink
shades in fall.
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JAPANESE MAPLES
Acer palmatum
‘Shaina’ – This tree
has small, deeply cut
leaves that start out
bright red and mature
to deep reddish-purple
and magenta in fall.
Upright, with dense
branching, ‘Shaina’
stays only eight feet
by eight feet.
The leaves of Acer palmatum ‘Shishio
Improved’, photographed at Eshraghi
Nursery, initially display a rich hue of crimson
that almost seems to glow. The leaves
mature to a bright green. The tree can reach
15 feet high at maturity.
Some growers lead in innovation
too, offering an array of less common,
unusual selections for specialty garden
centers and collectors.
“There is growing interest and
knowledge about Japanese maples, and
as customers know more, they demand
higher quality,” said Ivria Kaplowitz,
key accounts manager for Eshraghi
Nursery in Hillsboro, Ore.
Growing west
According to Sales Manager Joel
Johnson, Eshraghi Nursery grows
Japanese maples for retail markets in
the Southeast, Southwest, Midwest, East
Coast and Canada – “everywhere but
Florida,” he said.
The nursery sells 60 different selections, in sizes ranging from a No. 1 container to a 30-inch box.
“The staples, like ‘Bloodgood’, sell
the most,” Johnson said. “Every different cultivar has strengths.”
According to Kaplowitz, the nursery’s high quality and varied selection
result from the extensive experience of
co-owner Linda Eshraghi, an excellent
grafting manager, and superior hygiene
in the grafting houses.
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“Linda sees new plants she likes
and chooses for improved color, different habit or unusual patterns of color,“
Kaplowitz said.
Eshraghi Nursery goes right to
the public with its maples, too, at
nearby retail garden center Farmington
Gardens. Linda Eshraghi helps gardeners succeed with maples by teaching how-to classes, and she recently
offered a tour of the nursery that
proved very popular. Visitors were
able to see the trees and come away
with a list of choices for spectacular
fall color, excellent winter interest, variegated foliage, employee favorites and
shady or sunny placement.
Growing east
Japanese maple expert Jim Schmidt,
owner of Don Schmidt Nursery in
Boring, Ore., grows for “maple junkies”
– collectors and high-end garden centers, he said, especially in Pennsylvania,
New Jersey and New York.
He agreed that interest in more
diverse selections seems to be growing, even though the market is, in his
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JAPANESE MAPLES
Curt Kipp
This as-yet-unnamed Japanese maple cultivar, marked simply “9” on the tag at Don
Schmidt Nursery in Boring, Ore., displays sharply-defined, red and green variegation on
its tiny, delicate leaves. According to nursery owner Jim Schmidt, many plant collectors
love what he calls “the freaks” — the cultivars that display odd characteristics.
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JULY 2009
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words, “flooded with the common varieties.” Demand for good, red foliage
remains high.
“’Emperor I’ is one of the hottest things on the market right now,”
Schmidt said.
Developed by Dick Wolff of Red
Maple Nursery in Pennsylvania and
introduced by Don Schmidt Nursery, it
has leaves and habits similar to those
of ‘Bloodgood’, but grows faster, develops a wider canopy and doesn’t fade
to green in the shade.
In Schmidt’s suburban neighborhood, there is ample evidence that
his enthusiasm for Japanese maples
is contagious. Many of his neighbors
have Japanese maples in their yards
– one or more of them, red and
green, upright and mounding, palmate and dissected, showing
their stuff.
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RHODODENDRONS
On display in the garden
At Arbutus Garden Arts in Carlton,
Ore., co-owner Norm Jacobs traces
his passion for Japanese maples to
childhood. “I planted my first Japanese
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DIGGER
DIGGER Marketplace
Schmidt gives and gets back too.
A few years ago, he found a volunteer Acer japonicum in a neighbor’s
yard, tested and introduced it as ‘Yama
kagi,’ after the name of his subdivision, Mountain Shadows. The vigorous,
upright tree has large, grape-like leaves
that resist burning, don’t turn leathery
and produce “outstanding fall color.”
Schmidt lauded Japanese maples’
many landscape uses. “We can replace
everything else in the landscape with
them,” he said.
Schmidt’s own backyard – which
is really more of a maple arboretum – proves the point. He he grows
around 250 selections, including one of
the biggest specimens of ‘Beni maiko,’
a variegated, upright tree with brilliant
salmon pink spring growth that fades to
mottled green in summer and produces
bright red fall color.
Schmidt will host a tour of the
all-maple garden when the North
American Maple Society visits in the fall
of 2009.
Schmidt searches for and tests
new selections for commercial viability,
while supplying the market with superior plants using “old-fashioned” methods: manual cultivation, hand weeding,
rainfall, and little or no chemicals. “We
trim everything hard at least once a
year,” he said, to produce thick, wellformed trees.
In the greenhouse where he tinkers
with maples, cool new variegated selections are coming up the line. “Everyone
likes the freaks,” he said, in reference
to the desire collectors have for a variety they have never seen before.
One colorful form, named
‘Rainbow’, has “everything people like,”
Schmidt said. “(It’s) pink, burgundy
(and) upright.”
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(503) 873-4004 • FAX (503) 873-2507
www.obersinnernursery.com
JULY 2009
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JAPANESE MAPLES
Curt Kipp
Acer palmatum ‘Tobiosho’ boasts a dense, green canopy through summer, but the colors turn
brilliant in the fall – first gold, then orange and finally scarlet. The color changes start at the bottom
of the tree and work their way to the top until the entire tree is scarlet. The tree was introduced by
Iseli Nursery after production manager Milt Tobie, for whom it is named, selected it in 1982.
maples as aesthetic anchors to the foodbearing plants in the garden I created
around my parents’ home when I was
15,” he said.
Jacobs and partner Deb Zaveson
started their maple collection, display
garden and small nursery around 1990,
“as we were laying out the garden
around our house,” he said. The two
work together on “assessing new acquisitions for garden-worthiness” and currently grow nearly 100 selections.
The two encourage customers to
design with Japanese maples for a variety of uses: as container or landscape
specimens, in groupings with varying
forms and colors, as understory layers
for tall trees and as border anchors.
“I want my clients, whether for
garden design or plant purchases, to
revel in the unique form and beauty
of their selections, not struggle with
them,” Jacbos said. “Many of our favorite and most popular varieties have
been around for a century or more.
Excellence is a matter of growing them
well and using them appropriately.”
Jacobs’ advice for using Japanese
maples appropriately includes the following steps:
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JULY 2009
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• Determine that soil and drainage are suitable, not heavy clay or
boggy for long periods, and free of verticilium as well as can be determined.
• Match the wishes of the client
for seasonal color, eventual size, texture
and foliage style.
• Match the tree’s natural
growth aspect to the parameters of
the site in terms of exposure to sunlight and topography.
According to Jacobs, a client might
like to prune and shape, but most prefer that the tree take on the form they
envision with a minimum of labor.
Most Japanese maples will grow in light
shade. His advice is to choose carefully
those that will thrive in full summer sun
with limited irrigation, or conversely, in
full shade.
Since Arbutus also specializes in
dwarf conifers, Jacobs would be one
to ask about using them in combinations with Japanese maples. He said
that it can be done, but it requires
knowledge of the shade tolerance of
conifer varieties, since the natural site
for Japanese maples would be the
edge-of-the-forest, or in light shade,
under larger trees.
Jacobs reported best results with
cultivars of Pinus parviflora, P. cembra and the native Japanese species,
Chamaecyparis obtusa and Cryptomeria
japonica. These are most suitable
for the light conditions favored by
Japanese maples.
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Bigger is better
Retired plantsman and specialty
grower Norbert Kinen of Kinen’s Big
and Phat Plants in Gresham, Ore. grows
around 80 cultivars for his market
niche: larger caliper (3-5 inches), artistically sculpted trees.
Maples account for about one third
of his business, and red maples are
leading the charge. “I still marvel at the
demand for red,” he said.
However, he expects that the
“appetite for red will gravitate to a
wider use of the leaf colors and textures
provided by the multitude of luscious
cultivars” of other Japanese maple cultivars that are not well known in the
trade and not familiar to consumers.
Demand for weeping forms seems
to be down a little, but “people are
getting more moxie about using a
wider range of cultivars,” said Kinen.
“As designers and consumers get educated, the market will improve.”
A favorite of Kinen’s is ‘Germaine’s
Gyration,’ which he called a “stiffarmed weeper.” “It is extremely beautiful when it first comes out in spring
and as the leaves change color during
the seasons,” he said.
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tax-deductible; consult a qualified tax attorney or accountant.
In the garden design
Darcy Daniels, owner and principal of Bloomtown Garden Design
in Portland, Ore., “turns to Japanese
maples again and again.”
“I like plants to deliver, and they
do,” she said. “I love them for the
color, texture, and fall color they bring
to the garden.” Not only that, but she
also appreciates that they are “gardensized trees, suitable for many of the
smaller, city gardens that I work in.”
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JAPANESE MAPLES
Curt Kipp
Acer palmatum ‘Manyo no sato’, grown at Don Schmidt Nursery, has unmatched
color with its green and purple variegated leaves. The color transforms to purple
and orange in the fall. It grows slowly, reaching six feet tall in 10 years.
Daniels looks for choices that
produce a tree-like effect, a graceful
canopy that won’t overpower a small
yard. A “good long season of interest
includes foliage colors, winter outlines
and pleasing textures,” she said.
While she is grateful for the diversity of choices that exist today, Daniels
would like to see growers “give us
something more for new effects” for
“gardens that people live in.”
So many choices
Despite the huge selection of
options among Japanese maple cultivars, every grower and designer has
favorites. Sometimes, everyone agrees
on the best of the best. From the sources for this article (Johnson, Schmidt
and Daniels), here is a list of selections
named as underutilized winners or simply superior choices.
A. palmatum ‘Mikawa yatasubusa’ – Daniels called this striking,
slow-growing dwarf a “dearly loved”
selection that stays tiny and is great
for containers or small, tight spaces.
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JULY 2009
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Schmidt mentioned the “natural artistic
structure” of the green tree, its irregular
branching and leaves that overlap “like
shingles on a roof.” Johnson stressed
the large, overlapping leaves that make
it “quite unusual.” (Three votes)
A. shirasawanum ‘Autumn
Moon’ – Daniels recommenbded this
small shirasawanum cultivar, calling it
“light and bright to illuminate the garden.” According to Johnson of Eshraghi
Nursery, it is “similar to ‘Aureum’ in
leaf shape and habit, (but its) leaves
are yellow tinged with bronzy-orange,
becoming more prominently orange-red
in fall.” (Three votes)
A. p. ‘Seiryu’ – This widely available tree, the only upright green laceleaf, has a delicate look from finely
textured foliage. It grows strongly, but
won’t outgrow its space. ‘Seiryu’ develops excellent red-orange fall color.
(Two votes)
A. p. ‘Ukigumo’ – According to
Daniels, this Great Plant Picks tree, also
known as the floating clouds maple,
“lights up a shady corner.” The varie-
gated upright, a favorite of Schmidt’s,
has “outstanding” white leaves flecked
with green and pink. “Shade produces
a nearly pure white leaf,” he said. In
the fall, it boasts pumpkin orange color.
(Two votes)
A. p. ‘Orangeola’ – This weeping laceleaf earned awe from Daniels
for its showy, orange displays, starting
bright orange-red in spring, fading to
rich red-green in summer and bursting into fiery orange-red in fall. “Heavy
shade encourages a deep green cast,”
Johnson said. “ (It has) a long lasting,
vibrant display and branches that cascade nicely.” It matures to 8 by 7 feet.
(Two votes)
A. p. ‘Oshio beni’ – Daniels
chose this tree for “red leaf with stature.” “It catches the light, so it does
not create a dark hole the way some
red cultivars do,” she said. According
to Schmidt, the tree has “excellent,
wide branching and bright, scarlet fall
color.” (Two votes)
Getting the word out
To help plant buyers find sources
for their material, specialty growers
noted the value of using the OAN’s
Directory & Buyer’s Guide. Schmidt uses
it as his primary marketing tool and
considers it “very important” to
his business.
Norbert Kinen of Kinen’s Big and
Phat Plants in Gresham, Ore. agreed.
“I get calls from the OAN Directory &
Buyers Guide over and over again,”
he said.
The calls come from other nurserymen, experts who source plants,
brokers and landscapers, as well as
landscape architects and garden designers, whom he views as “the key people
carrying out the evolution of wider pattern of cultivar usage.”
Elizabeth Petersen writes for
gardeners and garden businesses,
coaches students and writers,
and tends a one-acre garden in
West Linn, Ore. She can be reached
at gardenwrite@comcast.net.
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