A celebration of life

Charles Quest-Ritson watches the leaves unfurl in one of spring’s most glorious sights–the reawakening of Japanese maples in all their infinite variety

- Charles Quest-Ritson

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.