Acer palmatumThunb.

Japanese maple

WFO wfo-0000514777 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Acer palmatum, photographed by Mila C.
fig. a Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-17 / obs. 198459928
Acer palmatum, photographed by Adrienne van den Beemt
fig. b Adrienne van den Beemt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 170238534
Acer palmatum, photographed by Mila C.
fig. c Mila C., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203279694
Acer palmatum, photographed by Angelique Murphy
fig. d Angelique Murphy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190208422
Acer palmatum, photographed by Jamie Griffiths
fig. e Jamie Griffiths, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 145332054
Acer palmatum, photographed by Nova Patch
fig. f Nova Patch, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 124906031
Acer palmatum, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. g Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 167846540

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 534 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 534 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 87 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Acer amoenum Carrière
  • Acer decompositum Dippel
  • Acer dissectum Thunb.
  • Acer formosum Carrière
  • Acer friederici-guillelmii Carr
  • Acer horonaiense Nakai
  • Acer incisum Dippel
  • Acer jucundum Carrière
  • Acer matsumurae (Koidz.) Koidz.
  • Acer nambuanum Koidz.
  • Acer ornatum Carrière
  • Acer ornatum var. matsumurae (Koidz.) Koidz.
  • Acer palmatum f. albomarginatum G.Nicholson
  • Acer palmatum f. albovariegatum Pax
  • Acer palmatum f. argenteomarginatum Pax
  • Acer palmatum f. atrolineare Schwer.
  • Acer palmatum f. atropurpureum (Van Houtte) G.Nicholson
  • Acer palmatum f. aureum G.Nicholson
  • Acer palmatum f. bicolor G.Nicholson
  • Acer palmatum f. brevilobum Schwer.
  • Acer palmatum f. caudatum Schwer.
  • Acer palmatum f. crispum (André) G.Nicholson
  • Acer palmatum f. cuneatum Schwer.
  • Acer palmatum f. elegans G.Nicholson

and 63 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.