I have a 2nd year shaina and it has reddish trunk and branches. However I have a 5 year old shaina, but its branches are not very reddish, but it is not striking green either. So I think the reddish one is Shaina.

xman

Thanks! That would match my pre-existing suspicion. Unless somebody else says something different, I'll go with that. :-)

Correct ID... David

Just to confuse the issue, I have a 6 y.o. 'Villa Taranto' (in a container) but its trunk and branches are not what I'd consider green and not even close to "striking" green. Don't remember how it looked in its younger days. But it's not red, either:-) Anyway, you'll know come spring and the trees leaf out. It would be hard to confuse the two in leaf.

Thanks guys!

These are very young trees -- 1-2 years post graft, I'd guess -- so I'm not surprised if the wood looks different now than when they're older. The problem with leaf ID is that the juvenile leaves on VT are broader than the adult leaves, and these trees are so young that they seem to be essentially all juvenile leaves!

I'm probably exaggerating on the "striking" part of the green. Perhaps "noticeably" green would be more accurate. ;-) But I was moving plants around yesterday (I do mostly container gardening), and I was surprised to see how green it had become.

Anyway, thanks again. I will label the brown one Shaina and the green one VT, and once they mature I can switch the labels back if I need to. :-)

I think there is NO questuion which is which if they are what you have paid for ...The Shaina is the red one...if thats "what" was sent ...the same for the Villa T even if you call the green a brighter one ...that is all in each ones mind especially when you put a green branched one next to a red branched one...now if they were originally marked wrong all bets are off but that was NOT the original question !! David

Thanks David!

These were not mail order trees. I bought them in person at a small nursery from a nurseryman who loves maples. So I trust their ID, or trusted it before I lost the labels in any case. But he isn't local (about three hours drive from me), so I couldn't just drive over there to ask him -- and he shut down the nursery in October (which is why I was able to buy four -- they were marked down for his closing sale!), so I couldn't phone him either. And I am NOT very educated about maples, so I wasn't confident about trying to tell them apart myself.

Thanks again to all for your input. As soon as I find my Sharpie, I'll make new labels for the little buggers. :-)

Look at pictures and read descriptions. Labels get mixed up everywhere, who a plant was bought from doesn't really establish that it's true-to-name.