Acer diabolicum

Devil maple or horned maple is in the soapberry or Sapindaceae family and is native to Japan. It is a small tree, reaching up to 9 m in height.

• Young shoots are covered with whitish hairs when young, turning glabrous later.
• Leaves are deciduous, palmate, 10–18 cm wide and long, 5-lobed, heart-shaped or truncate at the base, lobes broadly ovate with a few large teeth; when young, both surfaces and ribs and veins are covered with whitish hairs, disappearing on the leaf surfaces with age.
• Species is dioecious; flowers are reddish, produced in April in short, pendulous corymbs from the joints on previous year’s wood; stock of the flower is downy, 2.5 to 3.7 cm long.
• Fruit is a double samara, blunt-headed with inner wing edges overlapping (like trident maple), with numerous stinging bristles on the nutlets and a few on the wings; each key is about 3 cm long, wings are oval and 1.1 cm wide; . A spur curls up at the base of the seed, leading it to be referred to as ‘horned’.