Probably many of you know of the overlooked little sibling, who loses out in attention to her or his elder. And, yet, that youngster certainly deserves to be noticed for all of their many assets. Such is the case of our local maples and the Vine maple, Acer circinatum, a beautiful shrub, which rarely gets the love of its sister-taxon bigleaf maple, Acer macrophyllum. (We have one other local, native species Acer glabrum, the Rocky Mountain maple.) Taller, bigger-leaved, and more abundant, bigleafs suck the well-deserved attention of most arborphiles.

(Then there are all the other maples, at least 79 different species, subspecies, and cultivars listed as Seattle street trees and more than 240 varieties at the Arboretum; many of these, particularly the red maple, our most common street maple, also out vie Vine’s for attention.)

Taking a step back, in time and space, the closest relative of vine maples, is not the bigleaf but the Japanese maple (A. japonicum), native to Japan. (Coincidentally, I just realized that we saw this species in many locations on our recent trip to Japan.) Both species evolved in Asia, then our species migrated across a Bering Land Bridge and took up home here, and has remained unchanged, or at least un-evolved into a new species, since that arrival, between about 2.6 and 5.3 million years ago.

Vine maples weren’t the lone Acer species to make this adventure; it’s happened six times and researchers are still debating as to whether Acer evolved here and first moved east before coming back “home” or whether they evolved in the east, or the north, and bounced back and forth between east and west over geological time. Such are the conundrums of paleobotanists.

Although I do love the bigleafs, with their extraordinary leaves that can be as much as 18 inches wide and green jacket of mosses and ferns, I have a soft spot for Vines, particularly in the autumn. Widespread in the low to mid elevations of our mountains, Vine maples are a dominant understory plant and one of the largest, almost more a small tree than a shrub. We have two in our backyard, exhibiting their brilliant fall foliage that electrifies our yard, as well as PNW landscapes with scarlets, crimsons, tangerines, and vermilions. Their beauty adds a grace note of stunning vibrancy to our verdant forests.

The first to make a formal collection of this stunning plant were Mr. Lewis and Mr. Clark on October 30 or 31, 1805. The duo and their expedition cohorts were along the banks of the Columbia River. Other fans of the plant would follow. For example, David Douglas wrote in the 1820s that the plants are “called by the voyageurs Bois de diable from the obstruction it gives them in passing through the woods.” Around the same time, John Scouler wrote that “from the slender branches of this tree, the native tribes make the hoops of their scoop-nets, which are employed for taking salmon at the Rapids.”

As I typically do, I want to veer over to language and the name Acer circinatum. It’s a curious combination. Acer is the old Latin name for maples, which at first might not seem terribly unusual but consider that Acer is derived from the Proto-European Ac, meaning sharp or pointed. A clear reference to the pointed leaves of maples, Acer also led to acrid and acerbic. (One early writer also stated that Acer owes its origin to the hard wood of some maples, which was used for lances and pikes.) In contrast, circinatum means round-leaved. So we have the pointed, round-leaved maple.

Split into an octopus of slender trunks, our backyard vine maple illustrates another trait of the species. If cut or killed by fire, the stems resprout, with 10 to more than 50 clonal shoots popping up, often within a year. And, if those resprouts get pinned to the forest floor, they will resprout again, producing clones that can sort of crawl across the landscape, helping to flourish the understory.

Our backyard vine maples are one the great pleasures of autumn. Each year they tentacle higher and higher into the light, always bursting out of the shadows and blazing into a palette of beauty—the little sibling revealing its secret treasures.

Excited once again to participate in the 2025 Holiday Book fest, on November 22, from 2pm to 4pm at the Phinney Neighborhood Center. I’ll be there with 27 other fabulous authors.

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