City Walks – Japanese Maples

There are lots of Japanese maples planted around me, which isn’t suprising because they’re popular in much of the US. They are one of the last trees to switch to their fall colors, and most years they are spectacular. This was not one of those years around me, though.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a good primer on the factors behind beautiful foliage. For example, “sunny days and cool, frostless nights results in the brightest palette of fall colors. Changes in weather can speed up, slow down or change the arrival time of fall’s colorful foliage.”

Last year, local Japanese maples looked more like this, keeping their leaves for a long time, and they turned bright, uniform colors.

This year we had very unsettled weather, with warm, rainy weather followed in short order by very cold, dry weather, and lots of wind. So you saw a lot of maples like this that appear to have said screw it, we’re just jumping into winter mode and dropping our leaves.

You can see the difference in the leaves of a tree from last year:

Compared to a tree from this year.

Different Yards, Different Maples

At any rate, I don’t think autumn foliage really matters much to a tree. The change in colors is a sign that the tree is done with the leaves anyway and has quit bothering with chlorophyll for the year. And even a mediocre year for fall colors for Japanese maples is still a nice last gasp before everything but the evergreens go brown.

Around me you’ll see a huge variation in sizes of Japanese maples depending on the lot size of the house. Some, like this tree which dropped a carpet all around it, can approach the size of a sugar maple, although with much more spread out form.

But you’ll also see a lot of dwarf versions like these following examples, which have been squeezed into postage stamp yards.