28-10-2004, 04:54 AM
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(Iris Cohen) wrote in
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Well, let me tell you my 'Arakawa' (there is no doubt of its
identity) has turned a bright orange-red. A picture of it on the
Web shows fall color a dark red. Even more interesting, Maples of
the World goes into this subject further. In this country, and
most of western Europe, Norway maple, Acer platanoides, is noted
for having crappy fall color. The leaves turn an insipid yellow &
fall off. However, the book mentions that in Eastern Europe & the
Caucasus, Acer platanoides has beautiful fall color. Of course the
next step would be for someone to go out to those parts, dig up a
few young specimens of Norway maple with nice fall color, and
plant them in the US to see what will happen. Meanwhile, a
Japanese maple that was plain green last year, & I was thinking of
getting rid of because of a root problem (not disease), turned
mostly dark red last week, so I will have to keep it.
My Amur maple turned the shade of red it is supposed to be.
Remember that most of Europe is north of most of the US, so there is
a major daylength difference. There isn't any real evolutionary
pressure for a tree to be pretty in the fall, it is just something
that some of them do.
Sean
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