Description: Large tree with narrow or rounded, compact crown and red flowers, fruit, leafstalks and autumn foliage.

Height: 18-25 m

Diameter: 0.8 m

Leaves: Opposite; 6-10 cm long and nearly as wide. Broadly ovate with three shallow, short-pointed lobes (sometimes with two smaller lobes near base); irregularly and wavy saw-toothed, with five main veins from base; petiole 7-9 cm long red above, yellow-green beneath. Leaves opening reddish-green, very shiny, soon yellowish green, then dull green above, whitish, silvery or blue-white beneath and hairy, especially along the veins; turning red, orange and yellow early in autumn, even before September on the ends of a few branches, deep wine red all over by late September.

Bark: Grey, thin, smooth, becoming fissured into long, thin, scaly ridges.

Shoots: Reddish, slender, hairless except when quite young. Buds very small, pointed, dark red-brown.

Flowers: 3 mm long, reddish; crowded in initially nearly stalkless clusters along twigs at joints of previous year's wood, or on short spurs of older wood; reddish stalks lengthening as flower and fruit develop. Male, 8 scarlet stamens and deep red disc. Females in separate clusters. often on separate trees, larger disc, bright red. In late winter or very early spring before the leaves.

Fruit: 2-2.5 cm long including long wing; paired keys on slender, drooping stalks 5-7 cm long; red turning reddish-brown; forking at about 60°; one-seeded; maturing in spring.

Habitat: Wet or moist soils of stream banks, valleys, swamps, and uplands; sometimes on dry ridges; in mixed hardwood forests.

Range: Extreme SE Manitoba east to E Newfoundland, south to S Florida and west to E Texas; to 1800m.

Whilst most spectacular in the autumn, the red flowers, fruit and twigs make this species handsome much of the year. Pioneers made ink and cinnamon-brown and black dyes from a bark extract. Already in cultivation in Britain by the middle of the seventeenth century (introduced 1656), reaching up to 21 m in England. Autumn colours generally not as good in Europe as in the New World.

Information: Audubon (1980), Bean I (1976), Mitchell (1978).

Source: Weasdale Nurseries, Newbiggin-on-Lune, Cumbria.

Purchased: 1993.11.19, one at 5-6'

Planted: 1993.12.20 at C10E in Maple/Oak/Alder triangle

Progress: Well, none really. This tree is still alive, but doesn't seem happy. It has made almost no height and no perceptible girth, though it continues to leaf out each spring, a little more weakly each year. In 2000, the top has finally died, though a shoot low down still leafed out, reducing the tree to 0.6m.

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