Buchholz Plant Introductions (Part 15)

Acer palmatum EX 'Amber Ghost'

Acer palmatum EX 'Amber Ghost'

Maples in the morning, maples in the evening, maples at supper time. I often reflect that if I was born independently wealthy I would have never operated a wholesale nursery that produced and sold maples – it would have been more fun to give them away. No need to breed for desirable characteristics at Buchholz Nursery, rather simply harvest seed from named varieties in an open garden setting and nature will reward the plantsman with a bounty of wonders. Don't go looking for something, better to let that something find you.

Acer palmatum EX 'Amber Ghost'

Acer palmatum EX 'Amber Ghost'

I have germinated thousands of such seedlings, and the problem is that so many of them become my special projects, and I tend to champion every tree for its unique qualities. Try to squeeze in that obsession with the challenges of running a profitable company. Well, I did it anyway, and as you know many random seedlings have proven to be commercial winners. I admit that it is rewarding to find some of them now common-place in the trade.

The MrMaple company from North Carolina recently produced a two-part Youtube video – you can find it on the internet – entitled the top 50 Buchholz maple introductions. The countdown to #1 was fun for me, to see how a nationally famous mail-order company rated my “babies.” I won't give away their favorite, their number 1, you can watch for yourself, but I was surprised, very surprised that Acer palmatum 'Fairy Hair' didn't even make it into the top 50. Of course it is similar to a music top-50 countdown, where no two people will likely agree Nevertheless I was a bit embarrassed that my introductions surpassed the 50 count – I didn't realize that there had been so many – as I had no intention to hog the limelight.

Acer palmatum 'Bloody Talons'

Acer palmatum 'Bloody Talons'

I remember back to about 2006 when GH15 was jammed with a couple thousand maple seedlings, and all of those displayed at least initial promise. The seedlings that were culled for looking just like ordinary Acer palmatum were moved elsewhere, and later became rootstock. The “interesting” group was further sorted a year later...and so the process continued. Hardly a day passed that I didn't walk through the greenhouse to enjoy the sights, and I preferred to wander alone in peace without the noise and bustle of the employees. Over the years one strange-looking seedling kept calling out to me, and eventually the A.p. 'Amber Ghost' offspring was named and propagated as 'Bloody Talons'. See Buchholz Plant Introductions (Part 6) for a recap of that story.

Acer palmatum 'Diva'

Acer palmatum 'Diva'

Another maple seedling that impressed me year after year was a green upright where the fresh spring leaves emerged with bright cherry-red tips. It was a crowd favorite with customers and visitors when I paraded them through the greenhouse, and later it was christened 'Diva', from Latin via Italian for “divine.” I fell in love with the beauty, but her charm in spring would fade by June (in the greenhouse) when the red leaf-tips evolved to purple, then to a faint purple by July, and for the remainder of the growing season there was no apparent justification for its selection. When I was about to shrug her off for good, she would dazzle me with scarlet-red in October-November. Such a diva indeed!, then she practically coos, “See me again in spring.”

Acer palmatum 'Beni shi en'

There are a lot of plants that I no longer grow. I thought about that the other day when I walked by my huge specimen of Acer palmatum 'Beni shi en'. My original tree was gifted to me by the late Harold Johnston of Alabama who discovered and introduced it, then went a step further and even patented it, but at least he allowed me to propagate the cultivar freely without messing with the patent burden. Harold called his findling “a once in a lifetime discovery,” and it originated as a branch mutation on a red upright palmatum. The Japanese name translates as “red-purple smoke” and the leaf lobes are rather narrow and slightly sickle-shaped with light cream-white margins. I discontinued it at least ten years ago because of its propensity to revert back to its 'Bloodgood'-like origin. I once had a row of eight stock trees 5-6' tall, and when my back was turned five of them produced sizeable reversions, where pruning would have ruined the trees' shapes so I threw those five away. I confess that I sold the three remaining before they became worthless, so there might be a place for me in plant-hell for doing so. Maybe the reversion issue is not the cultivar's fault though: it could be that I pushed them too fast with water and fertilizer, except that my original specimen in the Display Garden also has a large reverted portion which I still haven't found time to deal with.

I never met Mr. Johnston in person, but we would talk maples a couple of times per year on the telephone and we traded cultivars. He was a salty old cuss who wasn't afraid to state his elderly opinions, and I found his low-keyed sense of humor to be entertaining. For a number of years he would send me a five-pound bag of pecans at Christmas time, and I'm talking five pounds of shelled pecans. I could imagine him sitting on the front porch cracking the damn things into the night...maybe with a cup of moonshine for company. I decided that I would visit his Alabama nursery one day but I never carved out the time to do so, which I now deeply regret.

Acer palmatum 'Squitty'

Acer palmatum 'Squitty'

Acer palmatum 'Abigail Rose'

Acer palmatum 'Abigail Rose'

One year about 2005 Mr. Johnston called about a couple of dwarf seedlings that he had raised. He thought that they were plenty interesting, but they were just “squitty little things.” I had never heard of that descriptive word before and wondered if it was common Alabaman slang. He sent one for me to “try,” and he was right about it being a wimp, but as the photos above attest it is a fun little cutie. I named and propagated it as Acer palmatum 'Squitty' and I smile to myself every time I say or write the word. I didn't know at the time that ol' Johnston named a sister seedling 'Abigail Rose' after his granddaughter, and when I first acquired it seven or eight years later I somewhat regretted introducing 'Squitty', for the two sisters are practically identical. I like the poetry of Johnston's name more than 'Squitty', and the “rose” part of his selection is apt because in spring the leaves are partially rose colored.

Acer palmatum 'Shin hikasa'

Acer palmatum 'Shin hikasa'

Not to be outdone, a nurseryman from Saitama Prefecture, Japan introduced A.p. 'Shin hikasa' in 1984, according to maple expert Masayoshi Yano in Book for Maples, but it wasn't available – or perhaps even known in America – when 'Abigail Rose' and 'Squitty' were in the trade. 'Shin hikasa' has a couple of synonyms like 'Sin hikasa yama', but the word shin means “new” and hikasa or hikasa yama refer to “Hikasa mountain.” The old cultivar A.p. 'Higasa yama' was perhaps the seed parent of the “new” dwarf, and in Japanese the letters “g” and “k” are often interchanged. So, we now have three clones, two from America and one from Japan, and to me they look completely alike. I chuckle at the poorly translated Japanese-to-English in the Yano book, where the author wanted to say that 'Shin-hikasa' was not problem-free to grow. The translation came out, “It is difficult to grow without cultural techniques.” Well, thanks for...that, but we already know.

Acer palmatum 'Ilarian'

Acer palmatum 'Ilarian'

Acer palmatum 'Ilarian' was a seedling found by Ilarion Garfias who was employed by Buchholz Nursery in about 2000. He worked for two summers while in high school, a bright, happy boy who quickly made friends with everyone. He was on the crew that was preparing Acer palmatum rootstock for grafting when he pulled out a colorful seedling that resembled the well-known cultivar, A.p. 'Orido no nishiki'. I remember the day that Ilarion brought it to me after work, and his delight with his discovery was evidenced by his infectious smile. I congratulated him and explained that is exactly how new cultivars from seedlings arise, and I commented that if it proved a worthy selection then I would name it 'Ilarian'. It was and I did, but note that the maple was named 'Ilarian' – with an “a” – when it should have been spelled 'Ilarion' with an “o.” So, for both summers that he worked for me, my less-than-stellar office staff used the wrong spelling for his name on his paychecks and on all other government forms. Ten years ago when he came back to visit the nursery I asked why he never said anything about his name, he replied that he could still cash the paychecks and it was no big deal at the time. Well, it was for me since I had named and sold the cultivar for a number of years already, and it was a disappointment that we screwed up the name in his honor. Again, he just smiled.

Ilarion holding Acer palmatum 'Ilarian'

At the time Acer palmatum 'Ilarian' was discovered Buchholz Nursery was at its peak of maple production with about 150,000 grafts per year. Most were sold to other Oregon wholesale nurseries, with one company custom ordering between 60,000-80,000 per year. The pressure was on Buchholz because we used their rootstocks and their scions, and the profit margin was too small to accommodate any significant failure. It was probably in those years that my hair evolved from brown to gray, but I was still having fun with interesting seedling selections. The 'Ilarian' saga caused me to reflect that the young boy's discovery was the first time that anyone at Buchholz Nursery was involved with a plant selection besides myself. The second time was years later with Dulce Jimenez's discovery of Acer palmatum 'Dulce', described in Part 13.

Acer palmatum 'Kinky Krinkle'

Nursery work can be repetitive drudgery often performed in adverse weather conditions. The nursery workers – and I've employed many hundreds of them – develop their own individual strategies to survive the ordeal. Desiring more involvement and inspiration from the staff, I charged all 30-or-so to spend the last hour of one Friday and search through our 100,000+ seedlings to find something “interesting” or “unique,” just as Ilarion had done, and to put their name on their selection. No one really embraced the project, but I championed each choice for its qualities, just like a grade-school teacher praises every child in the class for his uninspired art or poetry. Out of the lot I did find one crinkled-foliage seedling to be of interest, and I temporarily tagged it 'Katie's Krinkle' after the finder. Katie was a college graduate from the South y'all, but her behavioral excesses with the vegan religion, heavy tobacco and weed consumption, combined with a bipolar disorder led to an early termination. Still I liked her maple selection and eventually we began to propagate it. I changed the name to 'Kinky Krinkle', and as thus it was included in the Vertrees/Gregory Japanese Maples publication. Therein it is described as “intermediate between the palmatum-type 'Tsuchigumo' and the matsumurae type 'Shigure bato'.” At one point I sent a start to maple-grower Karan Junker of England, but apparently I had a mental lapse with the name 'Kinky Krinkle' and I referred to it as 'Krazy Krinkle', as Employee Katie was certainly both. Ms. Junker didn't care for either name, for which I can't blame her, but I explained its origin, and that the college girl had a large, ugly octopus tattooed on her back with two tentacles reaching around her body to capture both bingo and bango.

Acer palmatum 'Kokyo'

Acer palmatum 'Kokyo'

Acer palmatum 'Kokyo' was a Buchholz introduction from the mid 1990s, and my start came from scionwood on a mature, at-that-time unnamed seedling growing in the renowned garden of Jane Platt, Portland, Oregon. It was a sturdy, broad-canopied tree with green foliage that featured reddish new growth in spring and summer, but then Mrs. Platt vowed that it would explode with fiery orange-red in autumn. I checked judgement as advised, then when I revisited at the end of October I was overwhelmed with a brilliant red orb that throbbed in her predominantly green scape.

Haruko at the gates to Kokyo Gaien

Kokyo Gaien

Black Pines (Pinus thunbergii 'Kuro matsu') at the Kokyo Gaien

How apropos that her sun-ball actually originated in Japan, the land of the “rising sun.” As the story goes, Mrs. Platt's sister, also a gardener, was touring the emperor's palace garden (called Kokyo Gaien) in fall in Tokyo, and helped herself to seed from one flaming-red tree. I was allowed to propagate from the Platt tree, and took the liberty to apply the name 'Kokyo', since I had to call it something, at least temporarily, so that I could keep track of it. Years later I also visited the Imperial Estate with my Japanese wife, Haruko, and I kept an eye on the lookout for the original specimen. Unfortunately I couldn't distinguish it from the dozens of other well-groomed maples, especially since we were visiting in spring. The garden experience was somewhat compromised by the piercing light at mid-day, and I wished we could have toured nearer to sunrise or at sunset. Black pines (Pinus thunbergii, or “kuro matsu”) were partially contained by Oriental pruning techniques, but their glimerous needles were very tiring in my jet-lagged condition. Nevertheless I was treated to the perfect example of komo-rebi (“leaking light”) when I looked up into the canopy of a large, towering Acer palmatum. The Japanese people have a mindset where the actual leaves and branches surrender to the emanating light that leaks between them. What “isn't” becomes the vision.

An example of komo-rebi at the Kokyo Gaien