June 17, 2005
the five finger maple
Before leaving the wonder garden at Western Hills (see previous entry) I shopped the plants for sale, looking for something different among the tables of 4-inch pots. At least here, unlike in the garden itself, plants were identified--written clearly in white pen on the green plastic pots. I didn't have much time as the place was closing for the day but I picked up what was obviously a succulent of some sort, two variegated and golden-leaved little things I knew not what, an aster unknown to me, and a pot of alstromeria. Then I spied what looked like a japanese maple--only a few inches high but sporting a healthy set of rather elongated leaves--and grabbed it before rushing to the check-out gazebo. I got out of there for $28.02.
I had to look up everything I bought. The alstromeria "psittacina" has red and green flowers--colored like the parrots of its native Brazil. The seeds come true (and T.D. shall put that to the test, Mother Nature willing). The aster "divaricatus" is the white wood aster of Northeastern America. The sedum "represtre" 'Angelina' is a jolly chartreuse green, mat-forming, pot-loving succulent from I don't know where. The variegated, golden-leaved babies are coprosma: kirkii variegata and "Beatson's Gold", a New Zealand genus, both dwarf forms of what apparently can be a large shrub.
Then there was the little maple. How I wish I had seen it's mother in the garden. Anyway, I carried away a vagabond of some renown with a story to tell. Though we call it maple that is not it's native name. You must ask a Tibetan, perhaps. For our "five finger maple" was found by an Austrian plant collector, Joseph Rock, near Muli, a village in what is now southwestern Sichuan in 1929.
According to William A. McNamara , who writes about the tree at the Quarry Hills Botanical Garden web site, "Renowned nurseryman Toichi Domoto successfully grafted scions onto seedlings of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and distributed them. This is evidently the origin of the tree at Western Hills Nursery in Occidental, which produces large quantities of viable seed and is now over ten meters tall....All Acer pentaphyllum in cultivation today, with one exception, appear to trace their origin to Domoto, Western Hills, and ultimately Strybing Arboretum....Three trees at Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco were presumed to be the only known survivors from Rock's discovery."
So, I missed it at Western Hills but I can go see it at Strybing Arboretum (recently rebranded the "San Francisco Botanical Garden" and excuse me if I cough). But no. I cannot because it is, as E. Idle says, "no more". According to McNamara, "All three had died by 1991, one girdled by a squirrel, and the others from root rot." Girdled by a squirrel (panic, gardeners).
Which wouldn't be so bad except that the genus itself may soon be "no more." According to McNamara, who writes the story of his search for the mother trees in 15 trips to China over a period of 12 years, fewer than twenty trees survive in a region of poor farmers where human survival depends on trees for fuel.
The Bayview Acer pentaphyllum....
And Acer palmatum for comparison....
P.S. thanks to commenter "Chili" who identified the mystery blue plastic flowered plant as "puya alpestris" and provided nice links to more photos of Western Hills and (wonders never cease)
Annie's Annuals where the no-longer mysterious Puya may be purchased.