Autumn at Boxerwood always waters seeds of gratitude for Japanese maples. I am grateful to Dr. Munger (who started Boxerwood) and to KB (who has been planting and tending here for 40 years) for planting many of them. I am grateful to the natural laws and the mysteries that have allowed new maples to grow up wild and unsupervised. I am grateful for the cycles of deciduous trees, and the death, fall, rot, reconstitution of their leaves that makes these glorious fall colors possible.
This month I was teaching a group of third graders at Boxerwood about habitats. As I was explaining what makes Boxerwood a great habitat for many living things, a boy threw his hand in the air and said, “I have something to say!” He pointed at a radiant Japanese maple behind me.“Those leaves are REALLY red. I like ‘em!” I like them too, and I love his unbridled enthusiasm for the beautiful world in which he found himself.
Boxerwood is home to a giddy variety of Japanese maples. Some grow only three feet tall and turn yellow in the fall. Some grow thirty feet tall and turn orange or red, or sometimes almost purple. These trees are all of just two different species, Acer palmatum and Acer japonicum, but there exist hundreds of cultivars, selected over centuries for particularities of size, leaf shape, and color.
Like other maples, Acer palmatum and Acer japonicum have winged seeds, known as samaras to botanists, and as helicopters to kids at Boxerwood. After they whirl to the ground and germinate, the seedlings often have different attributes than the parent trees, which explains some of the diversity at Boxerwood. Over 150 named cultivars of Japanese maple have been planted at Boxerwood over the past 50 or so years, chosen for their unique characteristics; and now a second generation is growing up, unpredictably wonderful in their size, shape, and color.
