''Acer nipponicum'', occasionally called the Nippon maple, is a species of

maple ''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...

native to

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. It belongs to the ''Acer'' section ''Parviflora''.

Description and range

''Acer nipponicum'' is a medium-sized

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

, growing to between Oregon State University Department of Horticulture
accessed 12 December 2011 and averaging tall. The branches and trunk have a smooth grey bark, while young twigs are a smooth, slightly lustrous dark green. The flowers of ''A. nipponicum'' are generally

andromonoecious Andromonoecy is a breeding system of plant species in which male and hermaphrodite flowers are on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside monoecy, gynomonoecy and trimonoecy. Andromonoecy is frequent among genera with zygomorphi ...

, but some trees in groves occasionally are androecious, having only male flowers. Wild specimens flower from about Late June and continue through late July depending on elevation, with trees growing at lower elevation starting to bloom in mid June, and some trees flowering through to early August. The species is found in mountainous regions on the islands of

Honshu , historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

, and

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...

in Japan at elevations ranging from . The northernmost groves are near Mount Hachimantai and Mount Iwate in

Iwate Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It is the second-largest Japanese prefecture at , with a population of 1,210,534 (as of October 1, 2020). Iwate Prefecture borders Aomori Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefectur ...

on Honshu. The southernmost groves are in the southeast corner of

Kumamoto Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyūshū. Kumamoto Prefecture has a population of 1,748,134 () and has a geographic area of . Kumamoto Prefecture borders Fukuoka Prefecture to the north, Ōita Prefecture to ...

on Kyushu.

Classification

ribosomal Ribosomes ( ) are macromolecular machines, found within all cells, that perform biological protein synthesis (mRNA translation). Ribosomes link amino acids together in the order specified by the codons of messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules to fo ...

DNA study of ''Acer'' species in 2006 placed ''A. nipponicum'' along with the related '' A.caudatum'' near the base of the phylogenetic trees recovered. ''A. nipponicum'' is suggested to be closely related to two of the extinct species of ''Acer'' placed in the section ''Parviflora'' by paleobotanists Jack Wolfe and Toshimasa Tanai. The species '' A. browni'' and '' A. smileyi'' were both described by Wolfe and Tanai in 1987 from groups of fossils found in western North America. The slightly older species ''A. smileyi'' is suggested by Wolfe and Tanai to have been closer in relation to ''A. nipponicum'' than ''A. browni'' based on the leaf morphology.

History

The species was first described by

Adrien René Franchet Adrien René Franchet (21 April 1834 in Pezou – 15 February 1900 in Paris) was a French botanist, based at the Paris Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. He is noted for his extensive work describing the flora of China and Japan, base ...

and Paul Amedée Ludovic Savatier as ''Acer parviflorum'' in 1877. This name was already taken, having been used in the earlier description of ''Acer parviflorum'' by

Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart Jakob Friedrich Ehrhart (4 November 1742, Holderbank, Aargau – 26 June 1795) was a German botanist, a pupil of Carl Linnaeus at Uppsala University, and later director of the Botanical Garden of Hannover, where he produced several major botanical ...

, which in turn is a synonym of ''

Acer spicatum ''Acer spicatum'', the mountain maple, dwarf maple, moose maple, or white maple, is a species of maple native to northeastern North America from Saskatchewan to Newfoundland, and south to Pennsylvania. It also grows at high elevations in the sout ...

''. Noting this situation, in 1938 Hermann Albrecht Hesse renamed the species to ''Acer brevilobum'', but because this renaming was published thirteen days after Hiroshi Hara published his renaming of the species to ''Acer nipponicum'', the ''A. nipponicum'' name has priority.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q4673170 nipponicum Trees of Japan Plants described in 1878