​Japanese maples grow wild across the hills of Japan, Korea and into Mongolia and Russia too. As a wild tree it grows 20-35 feet tall, occasionally more, and usually has several trunks, rather than a single central trunk. The bark is smooth and gray on older limbs, but green, red or sometimes pink on younger shoots. This tree grows in the shade of larger forest trees, which is why it is more shade-tolerant than most other deciduous trees. Being a maple tree it has the typical lobed leaf, with veins spreading out like the fingers of a hand and ending in five to nine lobes, with one lobe in the centre of the leaf. However the leaves are much smaller than on typical maple trees and since many garden forms have deeply divided leaves they may not be immediately recognized as maple trees. Japanese maple produce small flowers in spring and the seeds are the small ‘keys’ typical of all maples, which twirl down to the ground in fall