NOT EVERY SPECIMEN needs to dazzle the eyes by exploding with color. But to qualify as a focal point in the landscape or garden, it should still be beautiful to see and notable for some less tangible quality, such as rarity.
There is a maple that’s both beautiful and rare. It’s unlike almost any other maple on earth. Native to a small hillside in the mountains of western China, it may have passed into extinction in the wild in just the past few years.
Lucky for us, it earlier found a champion in Bill McNamara, a horticulturist, nurseryman, botanical explorer and former, the five-lobed maple—into cultivation. It’s still hard to find but not impossible, and its emergence into modern commerce is the botanical equivalent of an Indiana Jones tale.
