Japanese Maples

JAPANESE MAPLES I have said tnat Japan is the ancestral home of the maples. Two-thirds of the forest trees in the islands to-day belong to the genus Acer. 1 he artistic and skilful Japanese gardeners have The Maples developed a great number of beautiful garden varieties. These are dwarf forms, almost without exception, low and usually spreading in habit, as if to show to best advantage the wonderful form and exquisite colouring of the foliage and fruits.

Acer palmatunz and A. japonicum, with their varieties, show all possible gradations from a broad palm to the merest skeleton of a leaf. The Japanese worship beauty such as these garden maples show; and in the autumn when each careful gardener has brought his maples to their utmost perfection, a grand national fete is celebrated. The people dress for a holiday, and go forth "to view the maples." It is a day of picknicking,

combined with mushroom gathering and a sort of aesthetic jubilee —as much a time for rejoicing as the spring jubilee of the cherry blossoms. Japanese maples are among our most beautiful exotics. They are quite at home in American gardens, and there is nothing like them. Well might we turn pilgrims like the Japanese, and by much planting and close watching come to know and appre ciate them.

Acer Japonicum, the type, is throughout the season a uniform rich dark purple. Acer Nikoense, a large species, has vivid scarlet autumnal foliage. Other species of maples are imported from eastern Asia, and one or two each from the Himalayas, the Cau casus and North Africa. But the Japanese lead them all.