Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Chi-Tao Yuan stands among his Japanese maples.

Leaf Mold

Saratogan helps Mother Nature by cultivating, sculpting his varied Japanese maples

By Sandy Sims

At Saratoga High School's administration building at about 1 p.m., the red Japanese maple in the atrium is aglow with the sunlight overhead. In neighborhoods throughout Saratoga, lacy Japanese maples grace many gardens, and they always stand out.

That's because the Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) is more than a tree. It's a work of art. It has the simple beauty of a Japanese painting. It's graceful, it cascades, it flutters, it shimmers. Its colors range from deep ruby red to pastel green and cream. Each one is carefully placed in a garden so that the sun and the moon filter through its silhouette. It's not like flowers that fill the yard with color and blossoms and fragrance or like other trees that bear fruit or shade. It's meditative, like a delicate sculpture, and its creation is a joint effort by Mother Nature and gardeners.

The gardener must study each one the way an artist would study his subject, sometimes for days or weeks before ever making a cut. And the gardener/artist carefully grafts what seems like endless varieties of leaves to green shoots in order to cultivate these exotic trees.

Saratoga resident Chi-Tao Yuan has come under the spell of Japanese maples. He has become a co-creator with Mother Nature, grafting and shaping amazing varieties of Japanese maples. His back yard is awash with hundreds, maybe thousands of them, including seedlings and cultivars (grafted trees). They are packed artfully around the perimeter of his wide lawn. He calls them his "babies" and tends to them as one nurtures little children. A walk with him around his garden is an education.

"There are maybe 300 different varieties of Japanese maples," Yuan says. He has more than 100 varieties in his own garden. Varieties are distinguished by the amazing diversity in leaf shapes. Japanese maple leaves come in every shape, from the usual maple leaf to a leaf that looks like a group of long, serrated filaments joined at the stem. But a Japanese maple can always be identified by its lacy, cascading look.

Yuan steps into a small grove of 3-foot Japanese maples growing in black cans. He reaches for the leaf of one tree. "See the variegated [green with an outline of red] leaf of the Toyoma nishiki." He lifts another tree's leaf. "Look how the Shaina has such a short center; it's a mutation of the common Bloodgood," he explains. He points out the Hanami nishiki's tiny leaves. He lifts up another tree's unusual leaf, which looks like a mass of strings with fat leaves at the base. "This is called 'Old Harp Strings,' " he says. "Look at this one, how the leaves are so thin and serrated with no base," he says.

"See these spots," he says as he reaches for the Green Filigree Lace's leaf with pale white spots. "I love this one. It is so lacy." There's the Okushimo, with leaves that curl upward. He points out a leaf that hangs down like a claw, the Trompenburg. Then there is one that is also like a claw only with long red tips; aptly this one is called "Painted Fingernails." He explains that the names are Japanese or English depending on where they originated.

"The points of variegated leaves tend to curve a little [like a sickle]," Yuan says. "If red leaves curve, this is unique and something to be excited about." He points out a tree with small growths on it that look like tiny red whale's tails, each about the size of a fingernail. These are the seeds.

In fact, Yuan has gotten many of his seeds from a kindly neighbor who has a large, green Japanese maple grown from a seedling. He grows these seeds into green shoots. "You must have green shoots grown from seedlings for grafting," he explains. But exciting things can happen. For example, one of his seedlings can turn out to be an unusual variety, completely different from the parent tree. This different shoot would be called a "sport," or a mutation. Or when one of his young trees is growing, it could sprout one branch that is of a completely different variety from the mother plant. Yuan might clip this branch and graft it to one of the green shoots.

At the side of his house, among many maples, there is one with crusty, gnarled, thick bark. "This one is very unusual, and bonsai growers love it," Yuan explains. It's unusual because the maples usually have smooth bark. Some of them are grown for their different varieties of bark--paper bark, snake bark, coral [red] bark.

Yuan shapes his trees through careful pruning. "You must prune to open up the tree and let the sun filter through it," he explains. But there are many ways to shape a tree, such as staking it to get a more upright shape. Yuan has an 8-foot green maple in the middle of his yard that has a bottle of water hanging from one of the branches. "See how it helps the branch to cascade more," he says. Some varieties cascade lower than others. In his neighborhood, Yuan points out a deep burgundy maple that is about the size of a young elephant. It is shaped like a mushroom with its branches almost touching the ground. "That one is so beautiful," he gushes, "easily worth $10,000." These trees are slow growers, only a few short inches a year.

Yuan hauls a group of his trees to the Farmers Market in Saratoga on Saturdays and to the one in Mountain View on Sundays. There he sells, advises and educates. "If it's raining," he says, "why should I go? This is just a hobby." But he goes nonetheless. He does make money selling them. Though he only goes to the farmers markets from March through Memorial Day, he makes enough to pay for an annual trip to Hawaii.

Yuan smiles when he says no one in his family was a gardener. His mother was a teacher in Taiwan, so they lived in teacher's housing on campus. "I remember watching an old man plant what could be called a victory garden. Then I planted a green onion plant and watched it grow." That was the extent of his gardening as a boy.

After studying mechanical engineering in Taiwan and serving his time in the military, Yuan came to the U.S. and attended college at Sacramento State University. Then he moved to Milpitas, where he first encountered the Japanese maple. "They were too expensive for me, so I got some heavenly bamboo," he recalls, laughing. When he later moved to Saratoga, he started going to the De Anza flea market, and there he became acquainted with an Italian man who had a booth filled with Japanese maples. The man (who wants to remain anonymous) took Yuan under his wing and helped him get started with the maples. "He was very generous with me," Yuan recalls. "He taught me how to graft and gave me maples to start growing. Yuan says his Japanese-maple mentor is a successful retired Silicon Valley man, whose advice about Japanese maples and about living Yuan treasures.

Yuan works at Sun Microsystems as a hardware project manager. He's been there 13 years and puts in the usual extra hours like most who work in Silicon Valley.

Yuan and his wife, Monica, have two sons--Randy, 13, and James, 7. Monica is a computer programmer for Visa.

Yuan spends many hours in the yard nurturing his plants and his soul after a long day's work at his high-tech job. Monica has accepted his need to be in the garden. "He spends many hours late in the evening working on his trees while people are normally watching television or in bed," she says. But Monica is glad his hobby keeps him in the back yard, close to the family.

She is grateful because his former hobby was photography and took him away from them to the wilderness. Photographs hang on his wall from Bryce and Zion national parks, from the top of Mt. Shasta, from Yosemite and from other beautiful U.S. landscapes. He's even had a few published in magazines and books. "I still take my pictures," Yuan says. "When we go on vacation I take my video camera, my automatic and my expensive camera for slides. I don't care what people think with all these cameras hanging around my neck. I love it."

Yuan's Japanese-maple hobby has benefited Argonaut School, which both his children have attended. He has planted maples there as well. "One of the trees passed away," he explains, "and the remaining one needs a companion." So Yuan must choose a new companion for it from his vast selection.

He contributes more than trees to the school. Once a year he teaches in his son's classes on a wide variety of subjects. He's taught them about maps. "There are many kinds of maps," he explains--weather maps, street maps, terrain maps and so on. "I have them make a map of their house." He's spoken to them about the maples, about volcanoes and rocks and more.

It's a struggle for Yuan to find time for work, maples, kids and Monica. "At least I feel like my hobby is good because I'm right here in the yard, at home. I don't go out for long golfing games or off on fishing trips. I'm right here."

Yuan is an energetic, enthusiastic guy who is passionate about whatever he is doing. His love affair with the Japanese maple began when he bought his first tree in 1992 and seems to be a lasting one. Maybe it has something to do with sculpting and creating. Yuan definitely has something of the artist in him.

He likes to help people with their Japanese maple trees and has made himself available over email to anyone who wants advice about the oddities and needs of these beautiful plants.

Chi-Tao Yuan's email address is yuanhsiao@aol.com.

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