page_title: Acer diabolicum
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Acer diabolicum / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Acer diabolicum, Aizu Matsudaira's Royal Garden, Fukushima pref., Japan 日本語: カジカエデ 福島県 会津松平氏庭園（御薬園）（植栽）
context_page_description: Acer diabolicum, the horned maple or devil maple, is a species of maple that is endemic to central and southern Japan. There it is known as カジカエデ, kaji kaede or オニモミジ, oni‑momiji, and is planted as an ornamental. It is occasionally planted as an ornamental outside Japan. It gets its specific epithet and its common names from the two hornlike appearance of the protruding curly stigmas of its flowers, which are retained on its winged seeds.
context_section_description: In the wild in Japan, Acer diabolicum typically reaches 10 to 15 m, rarely 20 m, with a fairly wide, rounded canopy. Young branches are brown or reddish brown in their second year and changing to a light grayish brown. Older bark is grayish brown, and nearly smooth or slightly pebbled. In its bark it somewhat resembles members of the snakebark maples (Acer sect. Macrantha), but it is a member of Acer sect. Lithocarpa.
  The winter buds are ovate to oblong-ovate, dark brown in color, and protected by 6 to 8 pairs of pubescent scales. Petioles are long and slender from 4 to 10 cm, with some pubescence at their apices. The deciduous leaves have five lobes, and are from 10 to 12 centimetres in length and breadth. They are cordate or subcordate, and rarely basally truncate. The lobes are broadly ovate, acuminate, and distally dentately serrate, or one might say crenately dentate, with the teeth broadly acute or even obtusish. The middle lobe is larger and itself frequently slightly three-lobed. The two basal lobes are smaller have perhaps one or two teeth on their margins. Young leaves have long silky caducous hairs, and retain some pubescence on their undersides at maturity.
  The trees are dioecious, with the usually salmon to brick red flowers appearing in early spring before the leaves fully unfurl. Staminate (male) flowers are held in 8 to 10 flowered nodding fascicle-like racemes. The slender pedicels are pilose or glabrate and from 2 to 4 cm long. The perianth is broadly campanulate and typically 4 mm long, with 4 to 8 unequal lobes. There are eight 8 mm long stamens, and no petals. Anthers are oval.
  Pistillate (female) flowers are held in 5 to 7 flowered pendulous sessile or peduncled racemes, and are 2 to 3 cm long. Their pedicels are 5 to 10 mm long. The sepals are elliptic, obtuse, and 5 to 6 mm long. The petals are oblong, ovaries are densely pubescent, styles are short with two curled stigmas projecting past the petals.
  The typically 3 cm long samaras hang from pendulous racemes, and drop in October. Bristles sheath the area containing the seeds, supporting the retained curly stigmas which have a hornlike appearance. It is these horns which give the plant its scientific and common names.
caption: Leaves and male flowers
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