Maples

Sixty maples are listed here, and they are not one shopping decision. Thirty-one entries carry the Japanese Maple name, and the Full Moon Maple, Acer japonicum Vitifolium, belongs with them. That group sits on the Japanese maples page, with position, scorch and planting covered in our maple guide. What is left is the other half of the genus: shade, nature strip and avenue trees, chosen on soil and branch structure rather than leaf shape.

Six red maple titles, and soil picks between them

On limey ground Acer rubrum yellows between green veins and the autumn display never arrives, so test the pH before ordering a row. Acer rubrum as the straight species is seed grown, and colour varies tree to tree, so an avenue will not match. Autumn Red is the tidier upright oval and takes a damp low spot. Fairview Flame is the narrow crown for a driveway, fussier about lime than the rest. Redpointe holds clean colour on higher pH ground, the sensible call where pH is unknown. October Glory colours late, once other trees have finished. Every red maple here stalls and scorches on a dry, compacted verge, so a nature strip row wants a generous pit and water through its first two or three summers.

Autumn Blaze and Jeffersred are one tree, Jeffersred the cultivar and Autumn Blaze the name it sells under, so the Freeman choice is Autumn Blaze against Scarlet Sentinel, both titled Maple rather than Red Maple. Both inherit shallow spreading surface roots from the silver maple parent, so keep them clear of slabs, sewer lines and paving. Autumn Blaze throws tight narrow forks when young, and those come out while the wood is still small.

The ones for hot, hard and alkaline ground

Trident Maple copes with reflected glare, compacted soil and restricted root space. Field maple takes clipping, wind and alkaline soil, though the straight species is disfigured by powdery mildew late in summer, which is why Elsrijk exists. Evelyn, sold in some catalogues as Queen Elizabeth, is the upright street form. Four Shantung hybrids cross Acer truncatum with Norway maple: Pacific Sunset where a courtyard bakes under western sun, Urban Sunset narrower, Ruby Sunset broader, Crimson Sunset for purple that holds through summer heat.

Norway maples are bought for outline

Six titles, and the difference is shape. Columnare holds a tight column for a narrow verge. Globosum is top worked, so check the graft height before you order: the clear stem you buy is the clearance you keep. Crimson Sentry is the compact purple sport, and regularly what a buyer means when they ask for Crimson King, its broad crowned parent. All want a genuine cold winter, and a mature Norway maple casts heavy shade over greedy surface roots, so plan nothing underneath.

Reading the size ladder

A 400mm pot turns up on forty-four of the sixty lines and 100L on thirty-eight. That 400mm is around thirty-five litres of rootball, smaller stock than the number suggests beside 100L. Bare root runs through the dormant months, sixteen lines as Bare Root Regular and thirteen as Bare Root Advanced. Set the Japanese maples aside and the large grades thin out fast: five lines at 400L, two at 500L, two at 600L, and Autumn Blaze on its own at 1000L. That 600L is as large as Trident Maple comes. The 750L and 2000L stock is all Japanese maple and sits on the other page.

Buy from a different page instead

Brisbane, the Sunshine Coast and further north will not give the cold autumn nights the colour needs; sugar maple there goes dull brown and drops. Box elder carries a compound leaf closer to an ash, on soft wood that snaps in a storm. The seeding species has naturalised along watercourses, so keep it off creek lines; Sensation is a male clone and sets no seed.