Japanese Maples

There are hundreds of different cultivars of Acer palmatum. They are chosen for leaf shape and color among other charateristics. Here are leaves of three different trees.

A Japanese maple has leaves with either 5, 7, or 9 palmate (fanning out from one center point) lobes. This one has 7 lobes. The margins are toothed.

These are leaves of a Japanese red maple. You can see that the leaf margins are only slightly toothed (compared to the other two trees).

The leaves of this tree are lacier. The margins have deeper teeth and the lobes are divided almost all the way down to the petiole.