Despite the terrible summer, the late warmth of last month has produced some stunning displays of autumn colour – and what better trees to show it than maples?

New England is the place everyone associates with autumn – or fall – colour, and its hotter climate obliges more willingly than ours. The American maple best known for its rich hues is the sugar maple,Acer saccharum, the one on the Canadian flag. Its rising sap is tapped in late winter to make syrup (32 gallons of sap are needed for one gallon of syrup – it makes giving blood look like a walk in the park). Unfortunately, if you are planning your own harvest, the tree doesn’t do well here, as we don’t have the long season of heat it needs.

Thankfully, you don’t have to travel all the way to New England for glorious displays. Go instead to an arboretum such as Westonbirt in Gloucestershire, Thorp Perrow in North Yorkshire or Bodnant in Corn-wall to be dazzled by home-grown talent, such as the reds, oranges and ochres of Japanese maples, A palmatum, some of which grow to 25ft while others’ cut-leaved domes stand only waist-high.

There is nothing to match their bizarre combination of fabulous hues and elegant structure. Just give them a little shade and shelter and a soil without too much lime in it, and off they go; the displays are especially good after a long, hot summer has promoted the necessary sugars in the foliage to create the colour.

Don’t mistake the sugar maple for the silver maple, A saccharinum, which is an excellent large, fast-growing tree, silvery when the wind blows, and turning brick red and gold in the autumn.

Some autumn hues are more gentle altogether. Our own smaller-leaved field maple, A campestre, is a regular constituent of field hedges. Although its young wood is very brittle, it will make a medium-sized tree if it is allowed. The warm, buttery autumn colour is an excellent match for ginkgos and elms.

For me, the best of the large, dome-shaped maples is A cappadoci-cum, which turns that same wonderful butter yellow as the field maple. You can always spot it because it is the one variety that grows suckers at its base (although this is never a nuisance: in fact, detaching a sucker is a pretty good way to obtain a new tree).

If you want a Japanese maple but with autumn shades of a subtle kind, try A palmatum ‘Shishigashira’ (once known as ‘Ribesifolium’, meaning currant-leaved). It has an upright habit (less elegantly balanced than most) and turns brick red while the upper leaves are still green. There is some yellow too: very classy. But it won’t do for those who like their autumn shades shocking.

There can be colour in the new foliage, too. The American box elder, A negundo, has both white and pink variegated forms (‘Variegatum’ and ‘Flamingo’), which some people love and others hate. Personally, I can’t see the point of a proper tree looking pink and frilly; I like my thrills and spills in the shrubs and herbaceous plants.

As a tree, box elder is easily damaged, because the new wood is weak unless a hotter sun than ours has ripened it, and wind or snow often break the main shoots. But grow them as pollards and cut the new long shoots back to the trunk every year, and it will produce more highly coloured shoots with real panache. Grow ‘Flamingo’ where you can get close enough to appreciate the pink margins of the leaves changing to cream as they mature.

The pinkest maple (yes, it troubles me, but others are desperate to have it) must be A pseudoplatanus ‘Brillian-tissimum’, usually described as shrimp pink, in reference to the perfect dome of new foliage that unfolds atop its trunk, like an ice cream, in spring. A variety of sycamore it may be, but it is only a small tree, and one so striking that it deserves to be used formally, in a place where it can show off, rather than looking lost in a woodland garden. Just remember the leaves turn greener in summer.

Two of the most striking acers are the purple and variegated forms of the Norway maple, A platanoides. ‘Crimson King’ is a powerful wine red, maturing to heavy purple; the leaves of ‘Drummondii’ have a broad cream margin that make the whole tree dazzle.

Sycamore leaves don’t colour well, but they do rot down easily, unlike those of the Norway maple, which blow about for months. The Norway maple’s leaves turn to fine oranges and yellows – vibrant, but not so intense that it looks foreign in the countryside. Where a horse chestnut looks okay, so will a Norway maple.

Acer flowers can also be worthwhile. Small they may be, but they are also plentiful. Watching the red flowers of A japonicum and A circina-tumopen among the unfolding young foliage is astonishing for the colour contrast and delicacy. The white variegated box elder, A negundo ‘Variega-tum’, redeems itself as a tree when it is covered with a haze of droopy flower, and later, fruit-stalks, as if someone has hatched the whole thing with a grey pencil.

Maples come in all kinds of habits, except weeping: there are dense maples and floppy maples and stiff maples.A griseum, the paper-bark maple, has terrific cinnamon-coloured peeling bark that sells it on sight, but the growth is resolutely stiff, the more so when you see it grown as a standard tree on a clean trunk; it’s like a child’s drawing of a tree. If you want it to look more relaxed, you must buy a small one and persuade it to branch low down by nipping out the leading stem.

The Montpellier maple, A monspessulanum, is a dense dome of a bush, like a Mediterranean version of our own field maple, but with neat little leaves packed all over its face. More open-looking altogether – gangly, even – are the snake-bark maples, the name given to a number of Chinese and North American species grown for their striped or marbled bark. They are not large trees, and as youngsters they have the uncomfortable habit of leaning to one side, resisting all efforts to make them conform to the vertical norm. It’s as if they were embarrassed to be upright, and, true, if you nip them out young and persuade them to be multi-stemmed vase-shaped shrubs instead, they look so much happier. For that, again, you must buy them small.

Even without syrup to pour over a pile of pancakes, are you converted to maples now? + Suppliers: Burncoose Nurseries (01209 860316, www.burncoose.co.uk ), Dulford Nurseries (01884 266361, www.dulford-nurseries.co.uk ), PMA Plant Specialities (01823 480774, www.junker.co.uk ), Choice Landscapes (01945 585051, www.choicelandscapes.org ). Further reading: The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Maples by James GS Harris (Timber Press £19.99)

Amazing acers

It is not just their colour that makes acers attractive; many have beautiful bark and interesting leaves. Here are some of the best:

A davidiisubsp grosseri: boldly streaked, marbled bark and bright orange or yellow leaves in autumn. A pensylvanicum(moosewood or striped maple): smooth pale-green bark with long white stripes. The shoots of the variety ‘Erythrocladum’ are brilliant pink when young, orange-red with white stripes when older. A campestre: the common field maple should not be overlooked, with buttery yellow, broadly palmate leaves in autumn. It is a good ingredient for a mixed hedge. A carpinifolium(hornbeam maple): as the name suggests, the leaves look more like those of a hornbeam. They turn golden brown in autumn. A griseum: wonderful peeling cinnamon-coloured bark and dark red autumn colours.

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