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Lacy Grace

So many Japanese maples, so many ideal choices

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RICHIE STEFFEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Acer palmatum 'Red Pygmy' is one of the finest small Japanese maples, hardy and gracefully shaped. RICHIE STEFFEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES The lion's mane maple turns gorgeously golden in autumn.

I'M FRESHLY enamored of Japanese maples. Although I've always had several of these lacy Asian confections in my garden, in the past dozen years or so I've been concentrating on more unusual trees. Then I began obsessing over a big, green-glazed container, trying to figure out what to plant in it that would add structure and height to the terrace. My garden is so small that every container counts. Whatever I planted would need to have seasonal interest yet year-round presence. What other kind of plant but a Japanese maple could fill those requirements while living happily in a pot?

So I started on a quest the Japanese have been on since the 7th century. This is a culture that has sought out and appreciated maples for hundreds of years, bestowing the trees with poetic names and holding maple-viewing parties. In 18th-century Japan, there were already more than 200 named cultivars, so I felt I was in the company of gardeners through the centuries as I set out to track down the perfect Japanese maple.

Japanese maples are, botanically, Acer palmatum and Acer japonicum. Visually, their leaves are so deeply lobed they've been compared to frogs' webbed feet. The foliage is often finely dissected for a light, airy effect in the garden. Leaves come in colors from shrimp pink to green, orange and deepest burgundy. In spring, the new foliage is as showy as flowers, persists through the summer, and goes out in an inferno of autumn color before dropping to carpet the ground. Even their seeds are prettily winged like little helicopters. Japanese maples appear incapable of anything but grace and elegance, even bare in winter.

It isn't difficult to grow Japanese maples to perfection. They put up with most soils as long as they're well-drained. Water well the first couple of years, and regularly during dry spells. Various cultivars prefer different amounts of shade, but with adequate irrigation most can take a fair amount of sun. And, please, prune them very little, except to clean out dead branches, or rid the center of twigginess. I can't think of a greater garden indignity than ruining the natural shape of a Japanese maple by cutting on it too much.

Searching for the ideal little Japanese maple involved one long, delightful bout of indecision. How about the lion's head maple (A. palmatum 'Shishigashira')? This odd little beauty has crinkled green leaves that grow in dense tufts and swirls like a lion's mane. It can take full sun, turns golden and orange in autumn, and takes well to pot culture. I reluctantly rejected it, despite a name I could easily remember, because its form is upright, and I wanted a tree that would drape down the sides of a pot.

Acer palmatum 'Red Pygmy' is more weeping in shape, with rich maroon foliage shredded into narrow, lacy strips. There are many similar little lace leafs, some, like 'Red Filigree Lace' even more finely dissected. Yet I'm assured that 'Red Pygmy' is one of the very best. I kept looking, though, hoping to find a tree as garden-worthy and small as 'Red Pygmy' but with more obvious color changes through the season.

A. palmatum 'Orangeola' appealed, perhaps because it sounded like a Popsicle, but also for its cascading, mounded shape and orange-red spring foliage. In mid-summer it has a second flush of orange leaves, turning dark red by autumn.

Strangely enough, amidst all the poetry and tradition, I chose a cultivar with the ugly name of 'Baldsmith.' Perhaps I thought, with a name like that, it must be an outstanding tree. More likely it's because I found it bare root and on sale. A. palmatum 'Baldsmith' is one of the newer dissectum cultivars, and its fresh spring foliage is soft orange tinged in green. By autumn, the lacy leaves are shades of bronze, copper and maroon. Mostly I like its feathery look, underplanted with a fringe of black mondo grass splaying over the sides of the green pot. I'm hooked and plan to unearth a rose out of a nearby copper pot and replace it with 'Orangeola' . . . or maybe . . .

Valerie Easton is a Seattle freelance writer. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net.