Thank you, bboy. As it turns out, we did visit a local nursery with a Master Gardener on the premises and he was able to identify the problem. Turns out what everyone else (including several people in nurseries) thought was the dried up remains of a pest, was effluence. The MG speculated that the tips dying back was due to bacterial blight, and the tree's response was to weep sap out just at the spot where deadwood met live wood. He said all maples have such high sugar content in the sap that when it oozes out and subsequently dries it looks white and hardened, like that on my branches.

I was up in eastern British Columbia this Spring and saw many square miles of bark beetle infestations. I was in Colorado from Steamboat Springs to Pagosa Springs this summer and saw the same thing there. I crossed the Continental divide 28 times in one trip from Montana to New Mexico. Yellowstone twice, going and coming. The destruction is devastating! I was also in Yosemite National Park where they do a lot of controlled burns as well as in the Calaveras Grove just north of there. We stayed in Oakhurst near Yosemite and Angels Camp near The Calaveras Grove of Sequoiandendron gigantea. Heat and bare ground are necessary for seed germination for these trees. That's why they burn, in addition to reduce fuel build up caused by fire suppression. The forest Service has numerous pamphlets outlining the benefits of controlled burning. They even admit it took a while to soak in. Their new goal is, diversification in both number of species, and varying ages in the same stand. Bark beetles have always been around. Good forest management might be able to minimize the effect on our forests. I can't see spraying as a viable option in the long run. We also visited the Redwood forests near Eureka, California and the forests around Mt Hood in Oregon for a week. We did some real traveling this year! Now I get to play catch up in the garden! Mike

Convince the neighbor that the Norway Spruce trees will not survive in the shade of the Maple tree. I really don't think the spruce trees will hurt the maple, but Norway Spruces grow pretty fast and will be over the property line and into the foilage of the Maple in no time. The trick is telling somebody they're stupid without letting them know what you are telling them.

Please ignore "Mike's" post. We all learn as we continue the art of gardening.. The link offered is a genuine respected gardening site. If you would like I have a great site for purchasing a wide variety of different Japanese Maple seed. It will be important for you to do some research so they will be grown in the correct zone. I live in zone 5a, but with winters that are too mild, it creates a difficult situation for growing any type of JM. Lets do our homework and maybe together we can come up with a inexpensive way to propagate JM seed.