(Nursery trees generally go through two or three growers before reaching a retail nursery.) The Krautmanns have been propagating as many as 40,000 paperbark maples annually since 1985 from seeds they collected in China or had shipped to them. I suspect my maple started life in the Salem, Ore., nursery of Mark and Jolly Krautmann at Heritage Seedlings. Mine was planted that way about four years ago to replace a stewartia that was sickly from the start. It can grow to 50 feet in the wild, but in the garden it tends to be a much smaller tree that lends itself to use by a walkway or patio. It doesn’t have the flamboyant floral display of, say, a magnolia or dogwood, and its chief ornament, the peeling red bark, requires a more refined appreciation. In recent years, its availability has increased substantially, but the tree is still mostly found in the gardens of connoisseurs. Another major problem is that cuttings don’t root, so the nursery keeper has to make new plants from a limited number of seeds. Part of its rarity, in commerce and in nature, is due to the fact that it sets very few fertile seeds. Intrepid plant collector Ernest Henry Wilson introduced the paperbark maple to the West more than a century ago, but it has remained a fairly uncommon garden plant, in part because Wilson started with only about 100 seedlings. ‘‘When I tell people it’s endangered in China, they’re very surprised,’’ said Aiello, director of horticulture at the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia. No one is knocking on my door for pollen or seed at the moment, but the idea that I’m growing a tree that is imperiled is sort of exciting and decidedly unexpected.
Like the panda, this species is running out of individuals in its native habitat in central China, and it may come down to those in our little plant zoos - that is, mine, Aiello’s, and yours, if you have one - to help bring the wild Acer griseum back from the brink. When Tony Aiello looks at his home-garden specimens, he sees the giant panda of the plant kingdom. When I look at the paperbark maple tree outside my window, I see a choice ornamental plant whose peeling, cinnamon-colored bark will get more beautiful with age.
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