Acer Sacharum 'Hiawatha 1"

The Story of the Hiawatha Maple - Acer saccharum 'Hiawatha 1'

As told by Doug Grimm...

      When I was a little boy, my Dad and Mom would load the family in the car and off we would drive to the city of Hiawatha (to us it was a big city - its population was less than 4,000) to view the beautiful sugar maples in the fall of the year.  Now for a farm boy growing up with this mental idea of the beauty of Hiawatha, Kansas - The City of Maples, it was quite suprising as I grew older to learn the beautiful maples there are really very rare and not the normal landscape of most cities.

But as milking cows, raising crops, marriage and a family and the cares of life press upon one's soul, these childhood ideas are often buried deep in the search of finding the ends of life and making them meet.  As our seven children began to grow up we began to see that if they were all going to stay at home on the farm, this farm was going to do more than raise corn, beans, wheat and livestock. 

We looked into several other options, and chose to put up greenhouses, entering the hydroponic tomato production business.  As this business grew and expanded into bedding plants, perennials, shrubs, trees, landscaping business, nursery production and an arboretum, we began to attend tradeshows to increase our understanding of the various aspects of our new business. 

In January 2003, we were attending the Western Nursery & Landscape Association meeting in Kansas City when the speaker, Don Shadow, made the comment that "you people in the Midwest do not have a sugar maple that will consistently give you good fall color".  We mostly all agreed.  In general in Kansas, some years you have nice fall color and some years you do not. 

But then, a flashback in my mind to my childhood days and the following 40+ years said "Whoa, why do those trees in Hiawatha give such beautiful color every year?"  After the meeting I visited with Don, and he was very excited to hear about some sugar maples in the Midwest that really did consistently turn beautiful colors of reds, oranges, and yellows every year. 

We went home and discussed this and thought about just how unusual this really is, and began to put a plan together.  The first step of this plan was to meet with the Hiawatha city council and ask them if we could prepare a ballot and distribute it to all the local businesses. We wanted people to have the opportunity to nominate what they thought was their favorite red fall-colored sugar maple in the city.

We would offered to give the city 100 free trees in exchange for the marketing rights for the chosen tree. There was a unanimous council decision in favor of our proposal as they felt it was a good way to promote the City of Hiawatha, known for its beautiful maples. This board decision and idea was picked up by the Associated Press. 

There were twelve trees nominated.  Throughout the next several summers, and this is something I still do, I paid much closer attention to these trees, observing for leaf scorch, leaf tatter, pests, dark green summer leaves and early development of fall color – just generally how healthy the trees were.  After the first summer, there were two trees that appeared to have outstanding summer leaf quality.  Then we watched with great anticipation to see what their fall color would be.  We certainly were not disappointed, as we learned the residents of Hiawatha knew their trees very well, and they had nominated the nicest trees in town. 

The following summer we received help from Steve Briebeck from Clinton, OK who helped us graft 325 buds onto “Caddo” sugar maple rootstock that he had raised and brought up with him.  We thought this would be the beginning of great success – but the following spring, we discovered only one of those buds survived and 324 of them died!  This was just the beginning of many failures.  But being a true farmer at heart – farmers don’t give up easy. 

We grafted about 50 more the next year, of which 100% died.  The Kansas climate in July and August is not a good environment for buds to settle into their new home.  So we thought we should ask a couple of other larger nurseries to help graft these trees.  No one was interested.  Big disappointments once again. 

We are very grateful to live in a state with a land grant university, Kansas State University, so we sought their assistance in helping us propagate our sugar maple.  They had a professor who said he had a graduate student looking for a research project, and they would love to research learning how to tissue culture sugar maple.  So we took some tissue down to the laboratory and learned a little bit about how they tissue culture a plant.  This was very interesting as in a few months we had hundreds of tiny little bonsai sugar maple trees growing in test tubes.  They were about 1 ½ - 2” tall – absolutely the cutest little trees you ever did see!  We would stop in at the University every few months and check on their progress.  What we were all looking and waiting for was the bottom end which had callous growing on it – to send out some roots.  After nearly two years of growing in the test tube and remaining sterile, they looked just like they did at the beginning – no roots. 

Well, the graduate student moved on and so did the professor that helped with this project, and somehow or other, all our test tube babies got lost.  No one knew anything about them anymore – where they went or what happened to them.  Another major low in our dream of developing the beautiful Hiawatha sugar maple!

At this point, we had kind of given up – we had exhausted about all the ideas we could think of on how to propagate this beautiful tree.  Then one day at a landscape meeting in Wichita, Kansas, Keith Warren from J. Frank Schmidt Company from Boring, Oregon, was presenting on how they introduce new trees to the industry.  After the meeting was over with, just by chance, we crossed paths. 

Keith, being a very observant man with sharp eyes, noticed my name badge said “Hiawatha, Kansas” and stopped me and said he remembered reading an article in an Associated Press news release about some small nursery in Northeast Kansas that was trying to propagate a beautiful sugar maple.  He was wondering if we knew anything about it. 

Well, I could hardly believe my ears!  I told him, “Yes, I did know something about it! I was the one that had worked on this a couple years earlier but had given up.”  His told us, “We are experts in being able to propagate plants like that, and if you would be willing to send me some scion wood, they would like to see what kind of luck they would have.  Once again inspired, we sent them some scion wood off of the two best trees that had been nominated. 

A year and a half later, Jeryl and I flew to Oregon.  We were able to see our trees growing and doing very well in Oregon.  However the following year, they decided one of the trees came down with a fungal disease on the West coast which it did not get in the Midwest, and so they were no longer interested in the one tree. 

We flew out again the following fall to observe once again and my, it looked so nice!  As good as the best, and better than the rest!  But Keith informed us that you can’t introduce a new tree, if it is only just as good as what is already available and in the market.  And so the exercise of patiently waiting continued to see if something ever materialized to set this tree apart from other sugar maples.

Then it happened.  In December 2007, there was a severe ice storm in a large area of the Midwest. Hiawatha, Kansas was right in the center of the storm.  Many of the old beautiful oaks, maples, ginkgos, and elms were damaged, some beyond salvaging.  The morning after the storm, I drove to town to check on the trees.  As I viewed the devastation of so many trees, power lines, power poles, it was shocking. Many homes were out of electricity for almost two weeks before power was returned. 

As I got closer to the mother sugar maple from which our Oregon Trail came, I could see the tree next to it, which also was a sugar maple, had half of its branches on the ground, broken off.  It was a very sad site.  Then, upon arriving at our favorite tree,I was amazed to see it was standing perfectly with a huge load of ice, bending all of its branches to the ground, but not one major limb broken, only a few small twigs on the ground.  It seemed almost unbelievable that this tree we had been trying for so long to propagate could hold up under such an enormous load of ice.  I took a picture that morning, sent it to Keith at Schmidt’s, expecting to hear some good news immediately.  But no response came. 

Then in June 2008, my cell phone rings; it's Keith from J. Frank Schmidt Company in Oregon calling to tell me how much he had appreciated the ice storm pictures of our sugar maple. He stated he had not responded because he wanted to get a more accurate count of just what percent of the buds they actually grafted would “take” and become new trees, so he had waited until June to get that information. They had nearly 100 percent success with the 100 buds that they had grafted the summer before. 

He also informed me at that time, that the ice storm pictures obviously had proven this tree to be an exceptionally strong tree, and that they would now need to name this tree and begin its commercial introduction into the trade.  We suggested naming it Acer saccharum “Hiawatha” with the common name of “Oregon Trail” since the Oregon Trail passed through Kansas very close to this tree. We also chose the name Oregon Trail as the state champion sugar maple in Kansas was planted in the early 1800's to mark the grave of 5 children who passed away on the Oregon Trail. There were actually 5 trees planted, one at each grave, one tree was the champion tree. It has now succumbed to lightening and the second tree is now the current state champion. The ruts from the Oregon Trail are still visable on the hillside close to the 4 remaining trees that mark these unknown graves. 

We are grateful this tree is now available for all to plant and enjoy its rich fall color and summer dark green healthy leaves.

Come out to Grimm's Gardens and see the Hiawatha Sugar Maple, and pick one out for your own yard!