Acer palmatum Japanese maple

Vivid and late-in-the-season color graces the Acer palmatum specimens (now removed) overlooking the courtyard between Herbert Hoover Memorial Building and the George Shultz Building. Sairus Patel, 10 Dec 2017

Acer palmatum leaves and samaras. From Trees of Stanford and Environs, by Ronald Bracewell

A most attractive, small deciduous tree with good autumn and spring color. The delicate, deeply dissected leaves are 2 to 3 inches across and have five or more lobes with more or less fancy margins. The flowers are purple and the ¾-inch keys have widely spread wings. The Japanese maple is available in dozens and dozens of varieties with different leaf shapes, color, and habit, and ranges from tree size to small tub subjects. In Japan, where the tree is known as Takao maple, there are hundreds of named forms resulting from the close attention it has received, and deserved, from man since unrecorded time.

Children may enjoy picking up the fallen leaves and watching the variety of ways in which they sail to the ground. Before suggesting this experiment you might look at the leaves that have already fallen (which lie mostly the same side up) and ask whether the kids can suggest how they fall. On campus, seedlings volunteer under moist conditions.

There is a pair at the entry to the passageway between Memorial Church and Building 60, and another a little further in. Handsome examples of the ‘Sango Kaku’ or coralbark variety can be seen at the northwest corner of the Bing Wing of Green Library and at the corner of the Traitel Building across from them. More than a dozen large-leaved ‘Omato’ with rich red fall color are arranged in rows around the plaza north of the Gilbert Biological Sciences Building; their branches often retain the dead leaves in winter. Beautiful specimens overlooked the courtyard between Herbert Hoover Memorial Building and the George Shultz Building but were removed when the latter was built.

Name derivation: Acer – Latin for maple; palmatum – hand-like (the leaves).