Give More Room
We had a robust Japanese Maple just out and to the left of our back door. The breathtaking cultivar started out small but grew crazy over the years, eventually peeking above the roofline and reaching all the way across the flagstone sidewalk it lived beside. I could never bring myself to cut it back. Its branches stretched up and out in haphazard fashion but its foliage, even on the low branches that hovered inches above the ground, turned so brilliant in autumn my heart wouldn’t let me give it a trim. Its leaves would morph from their everyday green (a color you can grow numb to if not careful) to arresting glow-in-the-dark orange when the temperatures started to drop. In the days when dark begins to descend early, the specimen stood like a lantern marking the spot where the pathway turned.
A Japanese Maple in Autumn by
Nguyen Hung
Until one day it didn’t.
This past summer in late July, this anchor of our landscape started acting weird. Its leaves began transitioning way before their date was due. In 100-plus-degree temps, tips of the Maple’s random branches just started to explode with vibrant color. Some turned fire-engine red, others pumpkin orange. Then the whole thing one day burst into neon. In the middle of the dog days, our tree put on a startling show.
Fantastic but foreboding. Something clearly was amiss.
A couple of months after the dramatic eruption, the Maple’s leaves began to curl and crinkle. It faded, not all at once, but rapidly in succession over a number of days - much the way a person’s hair falls out once chemo has infiltrated the veins, slowly at first and then in clumps. Every day when I walked past it, I’d close my hand around a limb and slide my fist to the end stripping it of its crispy, spent leaves. Somehow it made me feel better to just see the naked branch. When a knife nick to the trunk eventually revealed not even a trace of green, we knew it was gone. The tree, once gorgeous and glowing, had become an eyesore we needed to have removed.
When the landscape crew came out to do the deed, I asked them if they could identify what went wrong. Why did it go from flourishing to famine in the blink of an eye? What killed it? Was it too much water? Disease? Was it the heat? They said they didn’t know but would do their dead-level best to figure it out. Digging with the care of a surgeon, they explored.
When they finally pulled the Maple’s root ball from the ground, the tree farmers discovered no evidence of disease. The soil felt moist but not wet, a seemingly perfect environment for nourishing life. They found no signs of pests or insect damage either. But they knew why it died.
The cause of death was clear: The tree’s healthy roots had grown in a circle. The Maple had strangled itself.
I wanted a better reason. I wanted a cause I could prevent in the future. Something I could do something about. But there really wasn’t one. What had happened was out of anyone’s control.
My heart mourned the majestic Maple’s passing. Every time I walk the path it used to grace, I think about what’s missing. And while I know I could plant another, I also know a new one would disappoint for a while. It takes a long time for grandeur to make the grade. Without the Maple, the entrance into the back yard looks different. Neither worse nor better, really, simply not the same.
I wonder sometimes about how the tree went, why the roots grew around instead of out…how, ironically, its vim and vigor were what did it in. And the only conclusion I have come to is that it must have needed more room. Perhaps the Maple’s roots craved deeper, more flexible soil with space to reach and run. Maybe they circled around because they had nowhere else to go.
Food and water, protection and pruning... a Japanese Maple depends on these. But to form a firm foundation, it also needs to be free.
P.S. Personal Space