Featured plant: Autumn Blaze maple

Maples are among the most beautiful of the colorful trees of autumn. Their bright hues of red and orange have made them a landscape favorite throughout the country. A maple will be a star in any yard. But there are many varieties. Which should you choose?

Lavalette Nursery’s Mark Springer has a clear favorite -- the Autumn Blaze maple. This fast-growing tree with spectacular fall color is a hybrid of the red and silver maple that combines the best features of both. It has the vigor and adaptability of the silver maple along with the beauty and strength of the red maple. It’s such a wonderful tree that it was chosen Urban Tree of the Year for 2004 by the Society of Municipal Arborists.

Autumn Blaze is adaptable to a wide range of climate and soil conditions and grows 3 feet or more a year. Eventually it will grow to 50 feet tall and 40 feet wide. It grows in a very uniform shape, so requires little pruning. And since it’s a seedless cultivar, you won’t have to worry about weeding out thousands of seedlings.

Summer foliage is medium green. In the fall, Autumn Blaze develops a brilliant, long-lasting orange-red color. It also has some winter interest, with the new growth retaining a red color that lasts until spring.

Any horticulturist or arborist will tell you that fall is the best time to plant trees. It avoids the heat and sometimes drought of summer that may cause fatal stress to young trees. The cooler temperatures and adequate rainfall of autumn gives newly planted trees a chance to establish a good root system before going dormant in winter.