My favorite too! At my house the vine maples are wild, very old and covered
with lots of moss. The trunks and branches have formed very wide coves that
my guest have used as camping spots for outdoor parties. Ah, if only I lived
there as a kid, what great fort they would have made! They are especially
beautiful when the sun shines through them! They're wonderful to look at all
year round and I'd recommend this tree for anyone in the Northwest.
"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , "peter"
wrote:
Could someone suggest a small, low maintenance deciduous tree for the
seattle area (lots of moisture and shades in the winter, and some sun in
the
summer)? Small means between 8 to 14 feet.
My personal favorite is our own native little Vine Maple. It has a broad
range of appearance so you have to look at many from as many sources as
you can get to. It's nice to look at these before they leaf out (meaning
right now, quick), & judge them by their limb forms -- they're going to
have good leaves & flowers & pink seeds & pleasing autumn color no matter
what, so the only question is which shape looks best to you in winter.
Some have dozens of suckery trunks & are like huge bushes, but the ideal
is probably a mature single-trunked specimen which can be as wonderful a
tree as any fancy Japanese maple (athough if I had room, I'd have bushy
multitrunk one too). Here's mine:
http://www.paghat.com/vinemaple.html
Though it's a small tree, in a small yard it really has a feeling of
woodland substantiality.
There are of course many cultivars of Japanese maples to fill just about
any size & shape requirement or restriction. To get the best fall colors
you sort of have to be able to select one in autumn, because their range
of behavior is vast & some are more plain in autumn. But more of them are
being stocked at nurseries in spring. Japanese maples are largely
low-maintenance trees & also tolerate considerable shade.
One of the somewhat fast growing species rhododenrons really is a little
tree rather than a bush, R. concinnum, & I have one as a companion for the
Vine Maple, you can see it he
http://www.paghat.com/rhody_concinnum.html
It's evergreen rather than deciduous, but perhaps you meant not a conifer.
R. concinnum is not nearly as easy to find as a maple, the usual rhody
providers don't ordinarily have many true species plants to select,
preferring bushy hybrids. But if you could find a mature specimen in the
six-foot range, you'd have something already with a nice tree form. It'd
grow half a foot a year to 15 feet, might require side-pruning to keep it
from going as round as it gets tall, but otherwise demands no attention.
As it grows it is a choice whether to underlimb so it has a visible trunk
to be increasingly tree-like, or to let it leaf clear to the ground, but
even leafed top to bottom it is slightly "airy" so you can see the trunk.
Mine's relatively little at five feet tall, yet already gives the
impression of a tree rather than a bush, its leaning trunk a bit twisty.
Though a Paperbark Maple would eventually get bigger than 14 feet, it is
so slow-growing that its potential bigger size may not matter all that
much. Here's mine:
http://www.paghat.com/paperbark.html
They should be selected mature enough to already have the cool pealing
bark.
Witch Hazels if purchased as shrubs are such slow growers it'll always be
a shrub, so if you wanted one as a tree, you'd have to buy an expensive
mature one already at least eight feet tall. They can potentially reach 15
feet but the expectation should be that it'll be about the size it was
when planted for many many years. The American witchhazel perhaps grows a
bit faster. To get one taller than four or five feet will probably be a
special order, but they're definitely available. The fact that they flower
in winter makes them especially appealing.
If you had room for TWO trees, well-chosen fruiting cherry trees in the
semi-dwarf categories are worth considering. Select them for fruit, don't
go for the fancy flowery cultivars, as the fancy ones can be high
maintenance disappointments. But being fed sweet Rainier cherries by ones
own tree is such a warm cuddly feeling of being cared for by one's garden.
I asked different people/nursery and each one gave me a different
answers.
There are scores of trees that might fit your requirement, so of course
everyone's opinion is going to be about THEIR favorites. (Or at nurseries,
based on what they have that they could sell you then & there.) They're
probably all good suggestions so you just have to look at many specimens
of many recommendable species, to see which would be YOUR favorite to
live with.
-paghat the ratgirl
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/