Everyone knows the Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum). These tree has over 1,000 cultivars ranging from small shrubs to large trees. They typically have simple palmate leaves with 5 to 9 sharp lobes and grow naturally in Japan and the Asian mainland from South Korean to Russia. These are amazing trees with great fall color and they have found popularity in Bonsai and Japanese art.
I don't understand bonsai (a Japanese word meaning "plant in a tray") well enough to explain it here. Mostly, it sounds like some sort of wizardry. Another Buddhist-influenced artform, bonsai also comes from China. I've read that just staring at a bonsai on a daily basis improves brain function, enhancing memory and concentration.
Practitioners will take a seedling from a normal tree and bend it, prune it, twist it, clamp it, until they have a perfect miniature. They have techniques that stunt the growth of the leaves so that they grow in miniature. They can artificially age the bark so it looks hundreds of years old. I've seen scale miniatures of Maples, Pines, Bald Cypresses. I've seen a Siberian Crabapple bonsai with miniature crabapples. The Japanese will bonsai almost anything, which is why they tell tourists not to sit in one place for too long.
Often confused for a Japanese Maple, Siebold's Maple (Acer sieboldianum) can only be found on the Japanese islands. They have simple palmate leaves with 9 to 11 lobes. Franz von Siebold, a Dutch physician and amateur botanist, travelled to Japan in the 1820s to do doctor stuff, sure, but mostly to record and study plant life. Also, he introduced vaccines to Japan. This tree is not unique: 11 other plants and one abalone have also been named after Siebold. His interest in maps cut his visit short (he only stayed 8 years). The Japanese authorities labelled him a Russian spy and had him deported.
The Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum), I've read, grows only in the southern United States. I have seen, however, an alarming number of this species proliferating in the the Midwest. The wetlands in Danville, Mattis Park, and now Japan House.
Japan House has a grove of these beasts. You can see, in the picture, the young cones. When they mature, they look similar a pine cone, only completely spherical. Like a fir, the flat leaves of this gymnosperm grow spirally around the branch, but they twist so that they line up in two parallel rows like a comb.
When growing in wetlands and swamps, the tree produces "knees" or knobs that grow straight up from the roots to provide the tree with oxygen. I know what you're thinking. Don't trees make oxygen? Why do they need straws to suck it out of the air?
During photosynthesis, plants use carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to make sugar and oxygen. More specifically, energy from sunlight allows plants to split the two hydrogens off of the water molecule. The hydrogen, then, gets funneled through a miniature turbine that, when it spins, creates enough energy to pop the carbon off of a carbon dioxide molecule and store it in a sugar molecule. The extra oxygen seeps out as waste. That's the point: it stores the sugar and releases the oxygen. Trees store the sugar in their bark (which is why deer eat bark) and smaller plants store it as starch in the roots (think of carrots and potatoes). The oxygen just floats away.
Just like animals, trees need sugar and oxygen for energy. Our cells burn up oxygen to run the machinery that extracts energy from sugar molecules; the energy we need to walk and talk and type blog posts. During sunny days, trees make more oxygen than they use, so no problem. But during the night, on cloudy days, during the winter when the leaves are dead (all the photosynthesis action happens in the leaves), they need to take in oxygen from the soil. In muddy, swampy areas, the soil has low oxygen content. So you get cypress knees.
The Japanese White Pine (Pinus parviflora) is a very interesting pine tree also popular in bonsai. The needles grow in short bunches of five. That's pretty much all I have to say about the Japanese White Pine.
The Tatar Maple (Acer tataricum) takes its name from the Tatars, a nomadic band of warriors from Central Asia. These guys joined Genghis Khan in his romp across Asia in the 1200s. When the Mongol Empire fell apart, the Tatars retained control of Russia and ruled for another 200 years. The Tatars left a legacy of harsh autocratic control, adopted by the Czars, the Bolsheviks, the USSR, and, some might argue, the alleged Democracy under Putin. Historians claim that the Tatars left an indelible imprint on Russian society, that every ruling class since have been Tatars with different names.
In Europe, the spelling changed to Tartar, some think in reference to the Greek name for Hell, Tartarus (in the original Greek, 2 Peter 2:4 uses a form of the word Tartarus). This etymological legacy continues in a common American seafood condiment: Tartar Sauce. Eastern Europeans named the sauce Tartar because they used it on Steak Tartare, a dish made with raw steak. Apparently, a Tatar would ride all day with a steak under his saddle to tenderize it, then eat it raw. Steak Tartare hearkens back to the old Tatar tradition. So, think about that next time you order a Fried Shrimp Platter and the waiter brings you a little ramekin of creamy white sauce.
Anyway, the Tatar Maple leaf has three distinct lobes and is often confused with the skinnier leaves of a close relative. You may remember from an earlier post my avowed quest to find the elusive and invasive Amur Maple (Acer ginnala).
They planted one next to the Tatar. All my dreams have come true.
The Amur grows in China, Mongolia, and Russia and takes its name from the Amur River, an important geographical border affecting Chinese-Russian relations throughout history. Take the Rio Grande and multiply it by 100.
Extra
If you want to read a little bit about bonsai trees or see some good pictures, check out these links:
http://www.bonsaiexperience.com/BonsaiGallery.html
http://www.bonsaiexperience.com/TypesofBonsaiTrees.html
And then this is completely different:
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/02/bonsai-tree-houses-by-takanori-aiba/
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