Many forms were developed in Japan and these of course have Japanese names, while others were bred in Europe or America and usually have English-sounding names.

Japanese gardeners began to collect these forms, and produce more from seedlings, so that today at least a thousand different forms are known. Unlike many plants, where each individual is very much the same as another, these trees are naturally very variable, with different leaf-forms, colors and tree shapes. More than an excuse for a picnic, momiji-gari is considered a lofty spiritual experience. Japanese maple produce small flowers in spring and the seeds are the small ‘keys’ typical of all maples, which twirl down to the ground in fall.įor many centuries the Japanese people have travelled to the countryside to see the fall color, like east-coast Americans admiring the sugar maple. However the leaves are much smaller than on typical maple trees and since many garden forms have deeply divided leaves they may not be immediately recognized as maple trees.

Being a maple tree it has the typical lobed leaf, with veins spreading out like the fingers of a hand and ending in five to nine lobes, with one lobe in the centre of the leaf. This tree grows in the shade of larger forest trees, which is why it is more shade-tolerant than most other deciduous trees. The bark is smooth and gray on older limbs, but green, red or sometimes pink on younger shoots. As a wild tree it grows 20-35 feet tall, occasionally more, and usually has several trunks, rather than a single central trunk. Japanese maples grow wild across the hills of Japan, Korea and into Mongolia and Russia too.

Dwarf japanese maple full sun