A plant with great spring and fall color as well as great transitions in between. A real winner. To go with the geat color my plant as also shown great vigor and strength. What a combination. The only risk for this variety seems to be spring frost.
My beni tsukasa is in the shade and so far has done nothing special in the spring like it's supposed to. It has, however shown some very interesting fall color
I love the spring colours of Beni Tsukasa, two pictures taken yesterday:
With plenty of afternoon sun my tree has pink colouration well into June, albeit somewhat bleached out:
A couple of more pictures taken the day after the first two in my previous post (14 April 2009), under better lighting conditions, the emerging leaves are something special:
The top leaves of the plant are now suffering from sunburn, not really worth posting any pictures of that. The tree gets morning shade followed by direct sun all afternoon, and it has been sunny nearly every afternoon for the last four weeks with plenty of wind and no rain. :-(
I just remembered I saw a magnificent Beni Tsukasa at Westonbirt Arboretum at the end of April. It was over 25 years old (planted in 1983) with a graceful upright style of growth:
As has been mentioned earlier, the spring colors on Beni Tsukasa are wonderful. This photo was taken April 17, 2009 and I hope captures some of the spring hues. My only problem with this lovely tree is that it doesn't hold its color very long in my garden. Of course, I might have it in the wrong location, so perhaps I'll have to experiment with that.
Yes, the trick to making it hold its colour longer seems to be to give the plant more sun. Of course it is very easy to overdo it and then you just make toast...... like I've done to my Beni Tsukasa this year. It is flanked either side at present by Shindeshojo and Katsura (all in containers) neither of which have burnt, if that gives an indication of how much sun it can't take. The top is significantly more burnt than the area in the first photo, but you can see from the second that those areas which escaped have retained good colour up till now (May 12). I should note that the weather here has been sunnier and drier than the norm for this time of year. (Katsura in background for comparison)
I just noticed that the pictures I posted above (in post #10) of 'Beni Tsukasa' at Westonbirt are of the same tree pictured on page 109 of 'Maples for Gardens' by the van Gelderens, published in 1999. If you have access to the book it is interesting to compare the pictures and see how it has grown in the eleven or more years since the original photo was taken. This picture is taken from almost exactly the same angle as the one in the book: http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/fo...1&d=1242088629
Last edited by maf; November 5th, 2009 at 07:43 AM.
