Red Maple Acer rubrum Frank Jr Redpointe

Redpointe is a red maple selected for structure. It builds a strong central leader with well spaced, wide angled branches and a broad pyramidal head, so it needs less corrective pruning as a young street tree than most of the species does. Autumn colour comes on earlier than the older selections and runs bright red across the whole canopy at much the same time rather than in patches. Summer foliage is clean dark green. It goes in as an avenue and street tree, as a lawn shade tree, and as a feature planted for the autumn colour where a block has room for it.

The red maple that copes with harder ground

Part shade through to full sun, moderate water with regular watering through summer, and slow to moderate growth. It suits cool and temperate districts where autumn nights drop away, from inland Victoria and the tablelands to the Adelaide Hills and cooler coastal gardens, and it is fully deciduous and handles cold winters without fuss. What sets it apart in Australian conditions is soil tolerance, since it holds green foliage and clean autumn colour on soils with a higher pH, where other Acer rubrum lock up iron and manganese and yellow between the veins. That does not make it immune to trouble. The failure mode for any red maple is a dry, shallow, compacted root zone, and this one is no exception. Planted into a narrow verge over compacted subsoil with no irrigation, it will stall, scorch at the leaf margins and colour poorly for years. Give it a generous planting pit, break up compaction, mulch a wide ring and keep water up through the first two or three summers. Bare root stock lifts and transplants cleanly in the dormant season, which is the practical way to plant a long row.

Redpointe, Fairview Flame or Autumn Blaze

Take Redpointe when the site is a street, a car park surround or a driveway avenue and you want a tree that grows into good structure without annual corrective work, particularly where soil pH is high or unknown. Fairview Flame is the narrower crowned option for tight spaces, but it is fussier about alkaline ground. Autumn Blaze gives a longer and more even autumn display and makes a larger tree, but it inherits tight branch unions from its silver maple parent and needs formative pruning to stay safe. Redpointe is the low maintenance middle ground. All three are budded or grafted selections, so remove any shoots from below the union before they take over. Larger stock sits with our advanced trees.

Pruning young rows and feeding for colour

Prune in late autumn or winter while the tree is dormant, since late winter and early spring cuts bleed sap. Because the branch structure comes naturally, the work is light, so keep one leader, remove any competing shoot, take off damaged wood and lift the crown gradually over several seasons to whatever clearance a footpath needs. Feed in early spring with a complete slow release fertiliser through the establishment years, and avoid heavy nitrogen in late summer, which pushes soft growth and delays autumn colour. Remove stakes and ties by the end of the second season so the trunk can build taper.

Choosing a size

This plant is available in 12 sizes, from 200mm up to Bare Root Regular, priced from $48.95 to $1449.00 per plant. The size shown is the pot the plant arrives in, which is the rootball, not the height of the plant. The smaller pots hold younger plants that cost less each and establish quickly, which suits hedges, screens and mass planting where the plant count adds up. The larger sizes carry several more years of growth on the farm and give height and presence straight away, which is what you want for a single feature position or a screen that cannot wait. Not sure which to choose? Read our guide to growing maples in Australian gardens.