(Aceraceae)
Acer sikkimense  BSWJ11689

Description

Still very scarce in cultivation a semi-evergreen colourful species which has semi-persistent thick-textured foliage in British gardens, where it only forms a large shrub or small tree, with young shoots and leaves emerging a brilliant red. Forming sizeable trees in the wild with 15cm long shallowly lobed elliptic leaves, which slowly transform to a dark glossy-green above again turning crimson in autumn. All this graced by long dense pendant racemes of small winged seed when we found it, in the most northerly area of Vietnam close to the Chinese border. Best grown in a situation sheltered from freezing winds.