Acer davidii Seeds | Père David’s Maple
.jpg "Père David's maple bark")
LATIN NAME: Acer davidii
COMMON NAME: Père David’s Maple, Striped-Bark Maple
Plant Profile
The snakebark maples are grown for their winter trunks rather than their autumn colour, and Acer davidii is the best of them for a small garden. It comes from central and western China, where it grows in mixed forest at 1000-2500 m, and it makes a small, upright tree of 10-15 m with a rounded crown and three-lobed, sharply toothed leaves.
The bark is the point. Young trunks and branches are olive-green, marked with pale vertical stripes and a bloom that rubs off when handled, and the effect is strongest on stems between two and eight years old. Old trunks eventually turn grey and fissured, so the display has a window rather than lasting forever, and pruning to keep some young wood in the canopy is how you extend it.
Science & Biotechnology
The snakebark group is a taxonomically awkward set of species that hybridize readily, and A. davidii sits close to A. pensylvanicum and A. capillipes in a cluster that has been reorganized more than once as molecular data arrived. Garden plants are often of hybrid origin, which is why seedlings can differ from the parent in bark pattern.
The stripes themselves are lenticels, the porous tissue that lets gas exchange happen through the bark, and their density and colour vary with light and vigour. Shaded stems produce fewer, fainter stripes; a young tree in full sun makes the strongest pattern. Research on the genus has also looked at the anthocyanins and flavonols responsible for autumn colour, and at the seed dormancy mechanisms that make many maples slow and erratic to germinate.
Uses & Benefits
This is a specimen tree for a small garden or a woodland edge, planted where the trunk can be seen in winter against a dark hedge or a wall. It combines well with cornus and betula, whose stems supply a different kind of winter colour, and it is small enough for a front garden.
The wood is hard and fine-grained but the trees are too small and too scattered to be a timber source. In its native range the species is one of many maples used locally for tool handles and fuel, and several Asian maples appear in folk medicine, though A. davidii itself is not a significant medicinal species.
Growing from Seed
Maple seed needs a real winter. Mix the samaras with damp vermiculite and keep them at 18-20°C for four weeks, then move to 2-4°C for eight to twelve weeks before sowing. Surface-sow onto a free-draining, humus-rich mix, cover lightly and keep at 15-18°C; germination is spread over three to eight weeks and often continues into a second spring.
Grow seedlings on in light shade for the first year, since the leaves scorch in strong sun when young. Plant out in autumn or early spring in a soil that does not dry out completely, and mulch to keep the roots cool. Avoid heavy pruning: the tree bleeds from cuts made in late winter, so prune if at all in midsummer.
Our Take
If you want a tree that earns its place in February, this is one of the cheapest ways to get it. Seed is easy to handle if you give it the cold it expects, and the seedlings vary enough in bark pattern to be worth growing a handful and choosing the best.
Related Reading
Readers interested in Père David’s Maple frequently explore these as well: