Hi Mike,
I'm just north of you in Bucks county.
Mabey it's good that it hasn't bud out yet.
We're going to get real cold weather down to the 20's this coming weekend for Easter.
My Emporer has started to bud out unfortunately. Now I am worried about the little tree loosing all of the buds.
The Emporer isn't suppose to bud early at all, but the 70 temps for the past couple of weeks have convinced it to bud.
I mulched it good and am going to cover it with a big plastic trash can container as soon as the temps go down.
Relax about your laceleaf for now and count your blessings about it not budding yet.

Thanks for your feedback... I am going to take a picture of it in another week or two, and post it here. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! My weeping cherry turned out fabulous and it came from the same nursery on the Black Horse Pike in NJ (Hogbin's).

Still no buds/activity on the laceleaf maple, which was bought at a real nursury and was looking great in the fall after I put it in. I'm holding out hope but it is almost May and I'm surprised there are still no buds. Other maples in my yard and sidewalk out front are doing great. The sugar maples along our street rapidly bloomed this week. My bloodgood maple is fully leafed out, which tells me it is pretty hearty, considering I moved it 3 times since I bought it at Home Depot last year. It is only 3 feet tall though, so I suppose moving it didn't hurt it as much as a big tree, plus I didn't take apart the root ball any of the moves, esp. the last one, when my hardscape contractor moved it with his Bobcat machine.
Anyone else in zone 7a have laceleaf maples that are not blooming yet? I hope this sucker isn't dead.

Try scratching some of the branches with a fingernail to remove the outer layer of bark. If it green underneath, the tree should be fine and it's just taking its time leafing out. If it's woody and brown, then that branch is dead. If that's the case, try other branches to see if you can find any green ones. Usually dead branches are pretty obvious as they change color and snap off easily, while a live branch will tend to bend.

One Maple here, a palmatum 'Omurayama' loss all its' buds this past winter and was fine until the other day where I noticed the bark is now shriveling up like wrinkled skin...which is called "slipping."

This one's a gonner. Still very green under the bark, but definitely noticable that it will perish.

Another give away is that the intersections of yearly growth where buds develop, have turned brown/grey/black........ bad news!

Dax

Update - there are still no buds on my tree (see original post) and I'm sure the tree is dead, but I've left it in the ground in hopes of a miracle next spring. Is it possible it will come back?

NO.....WELLLLL it could rain golden eggs tomorrow ...it really could...but I don't think the odds are calculatable. David

Believe it or not, I still have the dead maple in the ground, hoping for a miracle. I'm going to remove this sucker in a few weeks and rework the soil with a lot of compost, then get another smaller one for this spot and try it again.
{{gwi:1038406}}
{{gwi:1038408}}
The pictures of when it was alive are somewhere on a CD I can't find right now!!

Hey Mike,

I'm in S philly as well. i was at Fairweather in NJ on wednesday nice plants nice prices from a very reputable place.

Here is a link that might be useful: fairweather

Hi Herman - thanks very much for your reply and for the advice on the garden store. I decided to take that small area where my lace-leaf maple was and plant a veggie garden instead, so my almost 3-year-old can get into the garden thing with me. He is already excited at seeing the radish seedlings which came right out, and we have been watering the garden together every night (except this past weekend with all the rain). I built a nice screen out of hardware cloth to keep him out of the garden since he still thinks of it as mostly as a sand-box. Maybe I'll post a pic of the new garden where the maple used to be. Thanks again!

so what happened then