An Iowa Garden

Acer palmatum Toyama Nishiki is quite the interesting little maple. Toyama is a city in Honshu province, and Nishiki-e is an ancient (1760) innovation in Japanese block printing, where multiple blocks were used, each with its own color, in order to produce multi-colored prints; undoubtedly the name was applied to this maple because of its multi-colored leaves in spring, with cream, pink and green swirled through the lacy leaves (they obviously aren't too shabby in fall either, with chartreuse, yellow and fiery crimson). This is a relatively small (perhaps four feet tall by six feet) bushy, cascading lace-leaf maple. It requires very careful siting because of its propensity to sunburn if it gets so much as a whiff of afternoon sun ( I thought I had mine in a pretty protected spot, but had to move it to a shady ravine). It's all worth it, though in spring and fall; due to having to settle in all over again after being sunburned, then moved, my tree is still a baby... it's going to be spectacular when it gets larger.

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