Sperry Landscape Ablaze with Maples
Our Japanese maples (Acer palmatum) have been colorful for more than two weeks. Almost all of them are the variety ‘Bloodgood.’ I always leave the house intending to come home with something different, but then I get to the nursery, and I remember how much my wife loves its rich red fall color. She’s a great wife, so it’s the least I can do to bring her another of her favorites – hence the dozen or more that grace the floor of our pecan forest.
Japanese maples do best in shade in Texas, especially when they’re grown outside the Piney Woods of East Texas. They prefer moist, highly organic, acidic soils.
My one chalk maple is a trophy to doing what I do not recommend. I bought a plant without having a pre-determined place to put it. I found it at a now-extinct nursery in Austin in 1985. I had chaired a convention of the Garden Writers Association of America in San Antonio, and I bought it as my own reward to myself. I’d never heard of it, and I knew it would be risky.
I got home and looked up chalk maple, my latest acquisition, Acer leucoderme. I found that it’s native to a small area of the Southeast, so I figured it would be doomed in my calcareous, rocky soil of Collin County. However, it has thrived, and its stunning fall show is as predictable as the popularity of football in Texas.
It’s a small tree, almost shrub-like, to 25 ft. tall and wide. I have it growing beneath pecans and red oaks, but online references from Alabama and North Carolina say it would tolerate a lot more sun.
Both chalk maple and my third tree, ‘Fire Dragon’ Shantung maple may be difficult for you to find. Fire Dragon was found and introduced by Metro Maples Nursery in Southeast Fort Worth 25 years ago. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a redder tree in Texas.
Texas A&M researched and compared Shantung maples (Acer truncatum) and determined them to be Texas Superstar plants. That’s a designation they save for the best, most dependable plants in the nursery trade. Fire Dragon, at least to my eye, seems to be the best of the best. Metro Maples may be about the only place you will find it. It was given to me to try several years ago, and it is a stellar winner!
We Texans have other maples available to us in the nursery industry. Caddo maples and Bigtooth maples are two outstanding choices. There are improved selections of red maples, and of course, the regular Shantung maples. All are worthy of inclusion in anyone’s landscape.