Cultivation and Uses
Japanese Maple has been cultivated in Japan for centuries and in temperate areas around the world since the 1800s. The first specimen of the tree reached England in 1820.
When Swedish doctor-botanist Carl Peter Thunberg traveled in Japan late in the eighteenth century, he secreted out drawings of a small tree that would eventually become synonymous with the high art of oriental gardens. He gave it the species name palmatum after the hand-like shape of its leaves, similar to the centuries old Japanese names kaede and momiji, references to the 'hands' of frogs and babies, respectively.
For centuries Japanese horticulturalists have developed cultivars from maples found in Japan and nearby Korea and China. They are a popular choice for bonsai enthusiasts and have long been a subject in art.
Numerous cultivars are currently available commercially and are a popular item at garden centres and other retail stores in Europe and North America. Red-leafed cultivars are the most popular, followed by cascading green shrubs with deeply dissected leaves.
Preparations from the branches and leaves are used as a treatment in traditional Chinese medicine.
Read more about this topic: Acer Palmatum
Famous quotes containing the word cultivation:
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)