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Acer palmatum 'Seiryu'

November

There is no contest in the garden in early November: the Japanese maples have it - and of them all the dissected-leaf variety 'Seiryu'. Trad has already ventilated, I'm afraid, about this paragon of trees. (Some would argue bushes, for it is incorrigibly many-trunked).

From the arrival of its exquisite filigree new leaves in spring, through the season of extending shoots (no snail: this tree grows a foot a year - at least in spread) to its infinitely gradual Joseph's coat season, it is simply the best. In mid-October, when green turns through red to maroon and purple, then back to red and orange and yellow (but still harlequin-wise, with patches of each colour, the patches of green longest nearest the middle) to a protracted explosion of the colours you see here in mid-November. It grows at Saling on a shallow bank of our richest clay soil with full exposure to southern and western sun, with reasonable shelter from wind except from the north.

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