I love the autumn color of maples, especially red maple and sugar maple and related species. I posted earlier asking about Japanese maples for color.

What I see available right now at local nurseries are A. Rubrum "autumn flame," "Fairview flame," "Sun Valley red," "brandywine," and something that on the sticker said A. rubrum "red scarlet." I saw some posts in response to a search of this site where the consensus seemed to be that this latter was not a real cultivar name, but some name given to the species itsef.

I see no sugar maple cultivars available here except "legacy" and "green mountain." I have a small "green mountain" that was severely damaged by the cicadas three years ago, and is in terrible shape, needing real pruning to get it back into some kind of reasonable tree form. And the "legacy" I had, had half of it die from some as yet undetermined cause--I searched the symptoms and gave up. It was so bad I removed it. I could replace either one or both of these if you folks give them good reviews.

I can get a wider variety by searching mail order sites, I would guess--any special recommendations for anything I should look for?

Just a general note--I like the standard red color that many of the red maple cultivars have, but I especially like red mixed with orange shades and yellow.

--Spruce