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What is the difference between Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) and red maple (Acer palmatum 'Atropurpureum')? A quick guide to telling them apart

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Leaf differences: Japanese maple leaves are papery, round in shape, with palmate lobes that are oblong; red maple has alternate simple leaves clustered at the tips of branches, with palmate lobes that are lanceolate. Flower differences: Japanese maple flowers are purple, in corymbose inflorescences; red maple has corymbose inflorescences that are terminal.

I. Leaf differences

Japanese maple leaves are papery, round, 6 to 10 cm in diameter, with a heart-shaped or nearly heart-shaped, rarely truncate base, and 5 to 9 palmate lobes, usually 7, the lobes lanceolate, with sharp tips and sharply serrate margins, the lobes cut to 1/2 or 1/3 of the leaf diameter, and the leaf surface hairless.

Red maple has alternate simple leaves, usually clustered at the tips of branches, with deeply palmate lobes, 5 to 9 lobes, the cuts reaching down to the leaf base, the lobes oblong-ovate or lanceolate, with sharply serrate margins. The leaves are red in spring and autumn and purplish-red in summer.

II. Flower differences

Japanese maple flowers are purple, in corymbose inflorescences, the common peduncle 2 to 3 cm long, with 5 sepals, ovate-lanceolate, and 5 petals, elliptic or obovate, with bluntly rounded tips, about 2 mm long.

Red maple has corymbose inflorescences, usually terminal, and is polygamous.

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