Sango kaku

This Japanese maple pops out of the landscape when there's snow on the ground.

Acer palmatum 'Sango kaku' is sought after for its red bark. It's also known as coralbark maple.

The leaves are green in the summer with a touch of red,

and turn yellow in the fall.

Japanese Maple

The Japanese maples are having their fall moment right now. This tree had leaves of all colors from green to red.

This one near the catacombs had some nice reds and oranges.

More Japanese Maples

From afar, this Japanese maple is pretty attractive.
It has these lacy leaves and a bit of a drooping habit that, combined, make it look like a hazy mushroom.
But I thought there might be more to this tree, so I took a look underneath. I love these twisting branches.
There was another Japanese maple right across the road.
Not quite as exciting under the hood, but beautiful nonetheless.

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.