planted this spring??

what was the weather all summer??? .. since planting ...

many.. many variables effect fall color ... ALL the usual stressors are options ... plus in your case throw in perhaps harvest.. mail order and planting .....

when i planted babes .. i seem to recall that good fall color did not happen.. consistently ... until the tree is what we might consider fully established ... and perhaps even mature ....

i have some very vague recollection ... that it took 5 to 10 years.. for my autumn purple ash to actually show fall purple ... and then.. the next year.. i cut them all down because of EAB ... and that was the last moment in time.. that i could do it myself with my chainsaw ...

ken

BTW: with this summers high heat and extended drought ... and very late first frost .... most of my trees did not properly color .. nor many in the county .... oh well ...

Trees in Toronto this fall have had little to no red in them. Neighbor has a Fall Fiesta Sugar Maple. Previous years the colors have been insane, this year its a dull yellow. All Amur Maples were the color of yours too. Must have to do with weather.

Been a bad year for fall color around my place also. Usually even the small acer ginala that come from seed have nice red leaves in the fall but not this year. My 2 year since planted sugar maple didn't color at all and it looked healthy and had lots of leaves.

Although ILMT, your's looks like it could still turn some before they fall. Everything was late here.

Plus specimen shown has just started turning. And there is a history of material sold as 'Flame' being seed-raised rather than clonal, resulting in variation in characteristics shown by individual specimens.

my amur maple didn't do much and now it's almost naked..but my Japanese maples are pretty..

I've grown Amur maples and they vary in color, from season to season. I had one that would be yellow one fall, then red, and even lavender. I once saw a hedge of Amur maple and the color variance was striking.

Sorry if I sound like I'm having a pitty party. I just thought that dark red color was pretty much a guarantee with this tree. Otherwise, why get the Flame cultivar?

Don't get me wrong, I love yellow and orange fall colors, it's just that I had high expectations of at least some color of red.

This tree has been a vigorous grower, since I planted it this spring. Hopefully, next year it'll be a show-stopping red.

I have six red maples cultivars in my yard, all selected for color, and after five falls, none have produced the promised color. Maybe next year!

Ilmt, just because your tree was sold as Flame, that doesn’t mean that it was correctly named. See Embo’s post above.

I just looked on Cold Stream Farm's website. Uugh. If only I had read the entire description of the tree! I basically did all my research online, and then just went to Cold Stream to place the order.

On Cold Stream's Amur Maple page it says:

" The leaves turn a brilliant orange to red in the fall."

Well, now I know not to expect a flaming red fall color. And they also say their Amur Maples come from seed.

Cold Stream Farms Amur Maple page

A couple of things..........the Amur maples sold by Cold Stream are not the cultivar 'Flame'. They are just species seedlings. Named forms (specific cultivars, like 'Flame') are only propagated asexually in order to clone or duplicate exactly whatever attributes make that cultivar unique. So cultivars are never seed grown but either grafted or from cuttings.

Also newly planted trees (is yours even in the ground?) do not always produce the same attributes - like intense fall color - as would a fully settled in and established plant. And as noted, fall color is dependent on any number of variables that can alter or dilute or even wipe out good fall color in any given season.

My little one from seed, when I dug it out, had bright red leaves last fall. I potted it for the summer and put it in the ground this fall. It didn't color at all. Give it some time before you make a final decision. If it's a dud next Autumn, then trash it.

With any newly planted woody plant, I give it at least 3 years in the ground before starting to evaluate it. It just takes a while for trees and shrubs to settle in, grow roots and foliage, and begin behaving the way they will as mature plants. Also as others have mentioned, this was a poor year weather-wise for good color development in the northeastern 1/4 of the US and nearby Canada, so variation from year to year based on characteristics beyond the plant’s genetic potential to have good fall color is to be expected. For instance, the maples around here had little red fall color, and my Fothergillas, which are normally red and orange, are a muddy gold with just a small amount of orange.

I view gardening as one of life’s lessons in patience (much-needed on my part.)

I found out today it's not a Flame Maple, it's an Acer Tataricum!

Depending on which taxonomic interpretation is followed Amur maple is considered either a full species (Acer ginnala) or a subspecies of Tatarian maple (A. tataricum subsp. ginnala). So maybe you saw something based on the latter combination, misunderstood. Because the specimen you posted a picture of here is clearly an Amur maple, with the characteristic bright green, basically 3 lobed leaves.

So cultivars are never seed grown but either grafted or from cuttings.

This is false. In addition to the history of 'Flame' being raised from seed there is a history of 'Bloodgood' being raised from seed and so on. What is true is that since seedlings of woody plants cannot be depended upon to be true to type every time, growers wanting to only offer clonal stock with its associated assurances of predictability and uniformity never use seeds.

Meanwhile cultivars of annual flower and vegetable plants of course routinely consist of seed strains.

Again without question an Amur maple.