Maple 09D
Acer palmatum / Japanese Maple
Informal Upright

MARCH 26, 2025

APRIL 2, 2025. I repotted this one last month, and I’m really excited about its possibilities. It turns out that this is a split-leaf tree, and the leaf shape is quite elegant! Now I have to grow and shape a trunk that matches. In some ways that’s made easier by its rapid growth habit. It takes off like a rocket. Short internodes abound. Because of that, it probably won’t have that longish elegance. It’ll be a sexy swishing skirt of a tree. Full of leaves and laughter. (How’s that for purple prose?)

MARCH 1, 2024. This is another tree I took from the maple forest I had going beginning in 2018. I know I had this tree for a few years before that, and the trunk shows some age on it, so I’m going to say it’s 9 years old and has been in training for 8 years. That seems reasonable for a seedling I bought at Pepper Place, or dug up in the yard on River Oaks. Anyway, I put it in the cheap pot I had 09B in last year, when I took this one out of the little green pot and planted it in the ground for a year. It will be another tall slim tree, like 09B, and I can only hope it turns out to have some of the same elegance when it has another few years on it. As always, time will tell.

Photos