Talk:Carpinus laxiflora

This is a remarkably handsome, sturdy, adaptable tree. Our specimen, planted on our property in an old riverbottom paddyfield in which the clay pan was dug through to ensure adequate drainage early on, has grown from a spindly five foot (1.5 m) tall sapling to a strapping sixteen footer (5 m) with a five inch (12 cm) trunk diameter in five years. It is highly disease and pest resistant, remaining completely clean and healthy in an environment in which botrytis, anthracnose, crown root rot and bark rust infections and various mildews, mites, bark borers, Japanese beetles and foraging deer are constant and vexatious problems. It tolerates equally our very wet monsoon season and the starkly contrasting droughts of mid-summer and winter. It tolerates shade from larger trees, but in its turn lets through enough light that our smaller Japanese maples and our rhododendrons grow well in its shadow.

Color is light yellow-green to jade green in new leaves and a darker bluish green for mature leaves. Autumn color is not especially good without a hard early frost, but that yields coloration ranging from scarlet to russet. Our tree has yet to produce the attractive hop fuggle like inflorescences for which the carpinus family is known.

This Carpinus laxiflora, or akashide (red shide or red hornbeam) as the Japanese call it, stands salient on the quarter of our windbreak that takes the worst beating from typhoons, serving as the tip of the wedge against the violent winds that visit us several times in some years. It withstands violent wind with aplomb, without breakage of limbs, having the toughness and flexibility that hornbeams are noted for. Our single specimen of laxiflora has performed so well that my only regret is that five years ago I didn't buy and plant several of them, rather than just the one. I am preparing to order four more to plant at strategic points of the windbreak.

Rick Hayhoe Kumano, Mie-Ken, JAPAN Posted 21 Jul 2009.