Japanese Maple, Acer palmatum. A beautiful tree in all seasons!

Linda

another photo

Maybe Acer palmatum 'Sanguineum' ??

This post was edited by ruthz on Tue, Nov 4, 14 at 0:45

Definitely A. palmatum, but that's probably as close as you are going to get. With a few notable exceptions, specific cultivars are very difficult to identify. Even experts have difficulty......
There are things that are absolute in life such as death and taxes. Unfortunately being able to visually identify a specific Japanese maple cultivar with 100% certainty isnâÂÂt one of them. There are several reasons for this. First, your tree may be seed-grown guaranteeing that it is not a named cultivar. Many older trees that may have been grafted lose there graft âÂÂmarkings so it is impossible to tell whether they are seed grown or not. Second, many Japanese maples are similar to each other in color, leaf type and many other visible ways. The actual differences in many cultivars can be very subtle. Even with the ones that are VERY distinctive you cannot guarantee an ID although you could give a âÂÂlikelyâ ID. There are also many differences brought about by environmental conditions that could also make the actual subtle differences in appearance even more obscure. Finally, the number of different cultivars that have been produced over the years is astonishing and may possibly number a thousand. A person would be hard pressed to know all of them in any intimate way. In my opinion it be unethical for even the most expert old-time Japanese maple grower or even J.D. Vertrees himself to give a 100% guaranteed ID on any Japanese maple.

Although it's hard to be sure, this does not look like a grafted form, therefore most likely to be just a species selection or generic Acer palmatum. There can be a lot of variability in appearance with seed grown or species trees and they can be lovely garden accents.

According to current A.p. cultivar registration, 'Sanguineum' is not a recognized cultivar name. It is sometimes incorrectly applied to the cultivar 'Chishio' but there is little similarity of the tree in the photo to that cultivar.

It seems a lot of purple seedlings (seed-raised plants) have been grown and planted in the past. These will have no applicable specific designation other than Atropurpureum Group or var. atropurpureum, depending on how we want to interpret and apply such terms (there is a distinct clonal cultivar 'Atropurpureum' that has been grown for some time in Europe).