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Botanical Name: Acer palmatum 'Bloodgood'
Common Name: Japanese Maple
Origin: Japan/Korea/China
Location: CSE
Notable Feature: It’s all about the color red! This Japanese cultivar features purplish red flowers in spring, deep reddish purple summer foliage, red samaras in late summer to early fall, and good crimson red fall color.
Habit: A deciduous shrub or small tree that typically grows to 10 to 25 feet tall with an equal or greater width. Habit is uptight and rounded and often multistemmed with low branching. Mature trees have muscular limbs, most picturesque during the winter season.
Flower: Monoecious (male and female flowers occur separately on the same tree). Small purple flowers with white petals and red sepals emerge with the new leaves and are borne in stalked umbels.
Fruit: Small samaras with wings that turn red and ripen in September.
Foliage: Palmate leaves are opposite, 2 to 5” long and wide with 5 to 7 lobes. The attractive foliage is a burgundy red and turns a brilliant scarlet color in fall.
Bark: Smooth, light gray with a somewhat fluted trunk.
Interesting Fact: ‘Bloodgood’ is the standard by which all other Japanese, upright red-leaf varieties are judged. Oddly enough the name 'Bloodgood' came from the owners of Bloodgood Nursery (founded in 1793, Long Island, NY) and had nothing to do with its red color. The origin of these seedlings appears to be muddled, some say Japan while others point to Boskoop, The Netherlands. Whatever its origins, it appears to have been cultivated in the United States sometime following the Civil War.