Autumn colour
This maple comes from a stretch of the world most visitors to a French municipal park have never had reason to think about: the mountain forests running from the Caucasus through northern Iran and...
Cappadocian Maple
Acer cappadocicum
Acer cappadocicum takes its name from Cappadocia, the region of central Anatolia where it grows wild in the mountains, though its native range continues north into the Caucasus, which is why it is sometimes called Colchis maple instead, after the kingdom Jason sailed for in the story of the Golden Fleece. We map 3 of them, in 3 cities.
Snap a leaf stalk on any of them and the sap that beads up is milky white rather than clear, the same trick its close relative the Norway maple plays. What gardeners actually plant it for is the autumn show: rather than the mixed reds and oranges of most maples, this one turns a uniform, saturated gold and holds the colour for weeks. Cork's grows in the gardens at Blarney Castle, dated to somewhere between one and one and a half centuries old by a 2009 heritage survey that never recorded who planted it. Utrecht's stands at the west entrance to Wilhelminapark, one of the park's original 1880s plantings according to the Dutch national monumental tree register. Lyon's, in the Tête d'Or's arboretum since the garden was founded in 1857, has been measured at 3.20 metres round and 26 metres tall, mature rather than record-breaking. None of the three carries a confirmed planting date, which for a tree grown as a specimen rather than a landmark is the ordinary state of things.
Lyon
Utrecht
Four stops earlier on the same walking route stands a very different tree from the same era: a Cappadocian maple, named for the ancient region of Cappadocia in central Anatolia, though its natural...
Cork
Autumn colour
This maple comes from the mountains around Cappadocia in central Turkey and the Caucasus beyond it, a long way from the limestone and yew of the Blarney gardens it has spent a century in.
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