This Japanese maple tree is my favorite trees. It is planted outside my front door under a canopy of oaks. The filtered sunlight dances on these warm reddish leaves in spring. As summer comes along, the leaves turn green. If you look closely, you can see the green transition already starting along the main veins on some leaves.
I did notice a few seed pods on the tree this year. Reminds me of a maple tree seed pods of my childhood. We’d split them and stick them on the bridges of our noses – or drop them and watch as they whirled away like a helicopter. Why are they shaped like wings? For flight! In order for the seeds to survive and germinate they need to escape the deep shaded canopy of their parent tree. Their wing shaped design permits a type of autorotation that lets them travel a significant distance from the moment of release from the tree.
