On 12/12/2013 18:22, Jeff Layman wrote:
Is there a website which translates into English what the Japanese name
of Acer palmatum cultivars means, and is reasonably comprehensive? I
found some at http://www.amblesidegardens.com/japanese-maples.html, but
assume there are others.

If you feed "translate" and a well formed Japanese word in English into
Google then you will likely get a translation that sort of makes sense.
You should prefer the one that is in the context of Acer cultivars.

Some of them will be a bit meaningless or poetic like "Lions claw" etc.

Japanese is like English but has many more homophones written
differently but sounding alike and with radically different meanings.

eg.

He rose early and rows to the rose rows.

Or the infamous "four candles" sketch.

My favourite Japanese semi tongue twister was

ni wa ni ni wa tori arimasu

Which translates as "there are two chickens in the yard".
(all the "ni" and "wa" are different Japanese characters)

--
Regards,
Martin Brown