Having moved to South Florida a few years back there are some things I miss about living in a more temperate climate. Spring flowers, for example. The thing, I think that is so enticing about spring flowers is the living proof winter is ending. Now, truthfully, I don’t miss winter at all and there are really a lot of flowers year round here that are so interesting it makes up for the lack of Yoshino Cherries (my all time favorite)

The thing I can’t come to terms with is the lack of Japanese Maples. When I first married, we lived in urban townhouse, there was a seedling Japanese Maple in a weasley back garden. Weasley is the operative word. This Maple had a spectacular fall color and when we moved to a bigger house I took a seedling with me. This Maple grew to 10 or 12 feet tall over a period of 17 years and is one of my all time favorite trees. The above Japanese Maples are from my former garden, a ‘Best Red’ and the Green is ‘Ryusen’. When we moved to South Florida I decided to chance it and dug up a seedling and carted it down here only to find out it was a Red Maple!

The Red Maple

Bah! Undeterred by my lack of Japanese Maple I decided to buy and prune into tree form a ‘Raggedy Ann’ Copperleaf. This is a burgundy and red tropical shrub with raggedy edged foliage kind of like a Dissectum Maple.

Raggedy Ann

Raggedy Ann turns out to be uncooperative and less than graceful. The tree form pruning attempt produced an ungainly shrub 5 feet tall with 5 stems,  with perhaps a width of 10 inches. However, the color is pretty good.

Some things just cannot be replaced.