JAPANESE maples are famous for their autumn colour in the dying weeks of October, a display that is spectacular, if sometimes erratic and short-lived.
All the photographs here, however, were taken at quite a different season—April to June—and remind us that leaf-colour in spring is utterly dependable: the worst the weather can throw at unfurling leaves is a light browning by frost. What’s more, those leaves go on expanding sturdily, the colours return and no wind can blow them away. Spring colours are a celebration of life and a promise of summer, brought closer by the lengthening days.
Japanese maples are forms and hybrids of Acer palmatum, a small deciduous tree that is native to parts of Korea, China and eastern Russia as well as to Japan itself. In the wild, it tends to occur as an understory species in shady woodland, where it grows to 30ft–50ft. It usually has more than one trunk, spreading out from close to the ground, and its leaves are anything between two and six inches long and wide, divided by five to nine pointed lobes. Other species are sometimes included in the general description Japanese maples—such as Acer japonicum and A. shirasawanum—and A. palmatum hybridises with them, both naturally and in cultivation.
Denne historien er fra March 24, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra March 24, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
