Copper beeches have much lovlier coloring, IMHO. I was on a walk in my neighborhood yesterday and saw a Crimson maple and a copper beech side by side. No comparison in beauty, BUT, as you probably know, beeches grow slow. You plant a beech for your children, for the future. There's also a purple leaf plum that eventually gets large enought to be a shade tree, albeit not very much shade. My mom loves those smoke trees, they are fairly large and have good color. I dunno, maybe they've improved on the color genetics of the norway maple, but olive red drabness is what the ones around here do in most cases. Perhaps someone has had a better experience to report. I'm a big fan of natives, I'd plant a copper beech for the future and a japanes red maple for my lifetime. Ya can't beat the beech maple combo for shade and beauty, IMHO, but I'm a prejudiced north country girl. I've been to Lake Geneva, LOVELY area!

"Would you? Could you?" From my childhood memories, squirrel is very tasty but so many have to die to feed me a meal (I'm a big eater) that I can't really get behind it. Not a fairly advanced mammal, that looks so cute. Now, 1 chicken could feed me a meal. A cow would feed me a number of meals. One squirrel is an appetizer. Your ethics may vary. Richard.

In the latter case if you are in an area with unsuitable autumn weather or soils this can affect results with fall color of maples. The Tatarian maple cultivar is selected for use in areas with alkaline soils etc. but red maples do not color well in alkaline soils - and fall color of seedling red maples varies from yellow to nearly purple depending on the genetics of the individual seedlings. Plantings or wild stands of genetically distinct individuals (rather than multiple specimens of a clonal cultivar) can be a kaleidoscope of different colors in autumn. Root damage I don't see as being related. In fact, if you stuck them in using care to avoid root damage that could have been a mistake. The most important thing when planting a tree is to make sure the roots are spread out in the hole and not kinked or circling, and that the same soil is present throughout the hole, with no zones of differing soils. Intact original soil balls are not desirable unless the backfill soil and the soil around the hole all happen to be the same as the soil inside the rootball - not a usual circumstance.

If the OP is wondering how similar the seedling would be to Red Sunset, then I think it would depend on whether Red Sunset is self-fertile. I've heard (not sure) that RS is a strictly female selection (not self-fertile), in which case I assume it would only produce viable seed if pollinated by male flowers from other rubrums in the area, and therefore seedlings would be less likely to turn out like RS. But if RS produces both male and female flowers, and there are only RS maples in the area, then the odds increase that the seedling will be like its parent.