I bought this at a OSH here in Santa Monica, Ca. It had no name tag, but I loved the look so I bought it anyway. Hope I can get help with ID. Thanks, Linda Image link:

krazy karma, just back out of this post and look at the top of the listings of postings of this forum. You'll see a heading "ON TOPIC DSSCUSSIONS" and next to it in smaller type, "Gallery". If you click on this with your mouse, it will direct you to the photo gallery for this forum (although it is perfectly acceptable to post photos in the discussions as well) and you will located linanm's pics. Unfortunately I have no enlightenment as to the ID :-) I'm not sure it is either Beni Maiko or Shindeshojo as my experience with both of these is that the incredibly red spring growth remains intact until quite a bit later in the season before changing gradually to green. Both of mine are in full leaf of the moment and neither has anything close to green on it. I guess it maybe quite likely that they could color up differently in SoCal's different climate, though.

Might be an unnamed seedling. As for pruning, I like to keep as many leaves as possible the first 2-3 years and then look at structural pruning. tj

From the appearance and your description, it looks a bit like 'Shindeshojo', however I would be very hesitant to assign it a specific cultivar name. With the huge number of registered cultivars on the market and the very close similarities many of them share it is virtually impossible to ID a Japanese maple with any degree of certainty. As one very reputable JM source states: "There are things that are absolute in life such as death and taxes. Unfortunately being able to visually identify a specific Japanese maple cultivar with 100% certainty isn’t one of them. There are several reasons for this. First, your tree may be seed-grown guaranteeing that it is not a named cultivar. Many older trees that may have been grafted lose there graft “markings so it is impossible to tell whether they are seed grown or not. Second, many Japanese maples are similar to each other in color, leaf type and many other visible ways. The actual differences in many cultivars can be very subtle. Even with the ones that are VERY distinctive you cannot guarantee an ID although you could give a “likely” ID. There are also many differences brought about by environmental conditions that could also make the actual subtle differences in appearance even more obscure. Finally, the number of different cultivars that have been produced over the years is astonishing and may possibly number a thousand. A person would be hard pressed to know all of them in any intimate way. In my opinion it be unethical for even the most expert old-time Japanese maple grower or even J.D. Vertrees himself to give a 100% guaranteed ID on any Japanese maple.