Thanks Dax. Metro Maples has a few new cultivars coming out this fall. One called Skinny Dragon that looks more like Japanese maple with thinner lobes and another one called Golden Dragon that has highest percentage matching leaf shape and supposedly long lasting golden yellow fall color. I'd like to get both planted in my yard somehow. I think another one is called Dwarf Golden Dragon??? Metro Maples gave me a different grafted dwarf shantung maple as a test plant to see if it stays small or not.
Well, noone else is seriously doing work on shantung maple so I like to try and steer people away from junk trees like silver maple and bradford pear and grow shantung maples instead. Despite the fact shantung maple is on Texas Superstar plant, it's not widely sold everywhere unfortunately. It's really that much easier to grow in alkaline soil compared to Japanese maple or Red Maple in full sun and that's 3/4th of Texas. In east Texas, you can grow all kinds of maples there because of sandy acidic soil with more rainfall. I sure would like to live there one day. My college Stephen F Austin State University in east Texas has very nice arboretum with all kinds of maple and it was pretty nice during early December.
It's nice what Metro Maples is doing to come up with nice cultivars for shantung maple that every body can enjoy growing with ease in Texas when noone else is doing that.
gardener365
lou_spicewood_txOriginal Author
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lou_spicewood_txOriginal Author