This blog is about trees, and my attempts to identify and understand them. The more you look at trees the more absolutely fascinating they become!
Tuesday, 21 August 2018
Acer cappadocicum, the Cappadocian Maple
Acer cappadocicum is a fairly large tree from Asia Minor - Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus across to China. It SHOULD be fairly easily recognised as its got quite distinctive un-toothed triangular palmately-arranged lobes to its leaves. It is said to have obvious milky sap in its leaves, and I saw some evidence of this.
More says it always throws up root suckers - but I didn't see any root suckers at Cobtree Manor Park, where I came across this strong contender for the ID in mid-August 2018. The leaves look the right shape, but do seem quite large (up to 15 cm) in relation to the dimensions given in this book, 5-10 cm. However Wikipedia supports up to 15 cm.
The tree is quite a late introduction to Western Europe, said to be as late as 1838. It is thought to be commonly planted in large parks and gardens - Leeds Castle for example has a bit of a collection of Acer cappadocicum.
The day after I first saw this tree at Cobham Manor Park, I saw a second tree just by the car park at Camer Park near Meopham! The tree is quite a light green overall, covered with multitudes of yellowish good-sized double samaras in the middle of August.
And, when I checked, there were indeed quite a few root suckers.
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