It is amazing. Speaking with the farmer behind us he believes his corn is about 2 weeks behind because the rainfall has come down in very short periods and mostly run off. On top of that most of the large rain producing systems have gone either north or south of us so far. It all evens out in the end so of course last night and today we got pounded with rain. On the bright side I will not have to water it for a while. The mulch now does look kind of weird compared to the way everyone else piles up mulch to the trunk. Hopefully as it grows I can expand the mulch ring and keep it not as deep so that it is more flat and does not draw attention to the flare as if it disappears into a hole of mulch. Thanks for all the advice and I will keep an eye on the tree the rest of the summer and provide updates. My hope is that the tree is putting a lot of energy into creating new roots so that way it can take up nutrients and plant itself firmly in the ground since it is in a very windy location. Then in the next couple of years it can start adding height. Kimberly, keep me updated if your tree retains its leaves. Mine have been red for a few weeks and none have dropped. My hope is that they will stay on for some time and then those branches will leaf out again next year. Do you have pictures of the tree? I would be interested to see if it looks the same as mine posted. I hope I can ask one more question: When a tree is stressed and drops leaves early, does that branch also die? For example, on the couple of branches that all the leaves are red, do the leaves just die off or does the branch usually die off and need to be cut out the following year? My thoughts on the landscapers/nurseries that sell the trees are they are much more short sighted that what we believe. I think it is not much about selling you another tree down the road when the one they put in dies. I think it is about the process of putting it in. They came with a 2 Â 2.5" caliber tree with a large root ball and a bag of mulch. They left with nothing. I would think that once they dig this big of a hole, plant the tree and use some to backfill, they would be left over with quite a bit of clay from deep in the hole. Instead of taking it away they just pile it on top of the root ball, cover it with mulch and leave empty handed. If you think about it, and they had to take away just a few buckets of soil from each tree they planted, this would create a problem for them with what to do with it. It is much easier on their part to plant wrong that do what is right. It is too bad because if they would have just left a pile of the soil that was not needed, I could have found a use for it.

Here is a follow-up development: While I suspected the tree suffered from chlorosis from the alkaline heavy clay, I bought a can of iron-chelate and experimented it on one of the branches. I dissolve a few grams of iron-chelate powder into about 2L of water. Then I dipped all leaves in the "experiment branch" in this diluted iron-chelate solution. I then dumped the iron solution right onto the root ball. After 3 days of the treatment, I noticed that the dipped leaves appeared much greener than the rest of the tree, which hasn't improved (or got worse). So I still suspect cholorsis in play with the red maple tree. I am going to dip more leaves to see if there is any good improvement. By the way - against all wise advises we still decided to replant the tree in order to: (1) Raise the tree bed to improve drainage (2) Cut the circling roots (3) Most importantly, remove the sod that I, due to lack of experience, burried at the bottom of the planting hole. At the time of exvacation, the root ball was swimming in a large pit due to poor drainage (not visible from the surface). The smell was awful (guess this is what CSI calls "decomp"). We removed all of the decomp mud, washed the tree's roots, and cut off the roots that have been affected by the rot. We also cut off the encircling roots. We then widened the planting hole from 2.5' to 3.5', filled it with fresh black earth & clay (30-70 mix). We elevated the root ball to be about ~6" above the ground surface. We compacted the mound to make sure there wasn't large air pockets. Then we covered it with ~4" of red cedar mulch, leaving about 6" of space around the trunk. It looks like a large red donut circling the tree. Hopefully the tree will recover from the surgery.

What kind of Japanese maple is it? When you refer to the "parent tree", does that mean this one is a seedling of a larger, established tree? If so, there can be considerable variability between the parent and the offspring with one often bearing very little resemblance to the other. And of course you do realize that Japanese maples come in a very broad range of leaf colors and that many selections go through a series of colors through the seasons, red being only one. And the amount of sunlight the tree receives can also impact leaf color, especially in midsummer.

I was going to post this same thing I've got a full grown what I believe is a 'Bloodgood' Japanese Maple that has been red every year except this year. We had a lot MORE rain than usual this year so I assumed that was the cause of the green leaves but it hasn't rained in a while now and they never turned red. Perhaps the nutrients got washed out of the soil? It looks like we are ALL still in question on the why here so... RESEARCH TIME! This is the best information that I found: Japanese red Maple leaves turn from red to green when the intensity of light is decreased. Most if not all varieties of red leaf plants lose the red color if the leaves are in a shaded area. Our trees are grown close together to conserve water and help keep plants standing.This causes the new upper most leaves to become very red and the leaves that are shaded by other leaves to become green. Once these trees are given more space the red color comes back." (1) Here's another interesting point: "Trees grown from seed lose their red leaf color in summer, which may be disappointing to the homeowner. " (2) My tree is in a fairly shady side of the house and is full grown now so there will be no moving it for me... I do think that all of the overcast rainy weather did send it into the green state that it never got out of though. Hope this helped some of you! Here is a link that might be useful: Sooner Plant Farm