Autumn Blaze Red Maple Trees

Acer x freemanii Autumn Blaze: Bareroot Red Freeman's Maple Trees in Standard Sizes

This hybrid maple delivers a long-lasting shock of red and orange colour in autumn that punches through the landscape, and looks superb in a stand of mixed trees with yellows and oranges. Autumn blaze has a lovely upright, egg shaped canopy that naturally suits a medium-sized garden or woodland, and look good when planted along and avenue. It is a sterile tree that makes no seeds.
It can reach a height of about 20 metres in ideal conditions, but 12-15 is typical.

Browse our other Maple varieties, or all of our trees.

Delivery season: Maple trees are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they are best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it is convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our bareroot trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features:

• Height: 20m
• Soil: Any well drained except shallow chalk
• Spectacular, long-lasting, orange-red Autumn colour
• No seeds to sweep up
• Drought tolerant
• RHS Award of Garden Merit
• Bareroot delivery only: November-March

Growing Autumn Blaze Maples

Suitable for most soils except shallow chalk (unlike our native maple, which loves it). It is hardy, and drought tolerant when established. It will have the best autumn colour in a sunny position (acidic soil also helps), but tolerates partial shade well.

Semi-regular pruning of mature trees will help to prevent branches falling off in storms. Strong branches have wide crotch angles, meaning that they are close to horizontal where they come out of the trunk, and weak branches have narrow crotch angles, so they are upright: removing the worst of the latter every few years will keep the tree in top shape. With young trees, all you need to do is to maintain a single leading stem and prevent a double leader from forming. 

Notes on planting Autumn Blaze Maple trees:
Autumn Blaze Maple trees will grow well in most well drained conditions. They prefer slightly acidic soil, but tolerate alkaline soil as long as it isn't shallow chalk rock. Mature, established trees are drought hardy.
They will not grow well if the site is prone to waterlogging.
It is best not to plant Autumn Blaze in very exposed sites. Regular, strong winds may affect the shape of the canopy and damage branches.

Prepare your site before planting:
It is good to dig over the site where you plant a tree several months in advance. Kill the weeds first: for tough weeds like nettles, brambles and ground elder, you will usually need a weed-killer to get rid of them. When you dig the soil over, remove stones and other rubbish and mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades.

Watch our video on how to plant a tree for full instructions.
Remember to water establishing trees during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Tree Planting accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass.
You can buy a tree planting pack with a wooden stake & rubber tie to support the tree and a mulch mat with pegs to protect the soil around the base of your tree from weeds and drying out.
We suggest that you use mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all newly planted large trees: if your soil quality is poor, we strongly recommend it.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser.

Did You Know?

It belongs to a group of hybrid maples that are very popular in America. They occur naturally wherever Red maples and Silver maples grow close to each other, but the parents of most cultivated varieties were crossed and selected in 1933 by Oliver M. Freeman (1891-1979) at the US National Arboretum in Washington, and in 1969 the hybrids were named in his honour by Albert Edward Murray.

Autumn Blaze was selected in the 1960's by nursery owner Glenn Jeffers in Ohio, and it has won at least two Tree of the Year awards there. Registration code Jeffersred.

Standard trees are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level: their trunk's waist measurement. Unlike sapling trees and hedge plants, standards aren't measured by their height, which will vary quite a bit both between and within species.
So, a 6/8cm standard tree has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8cm and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10cm around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
On average, standard trees are 2-3.5 metres tall when they arrive, but we cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.