Acer Shirasawanum Jordan leaf burn?

Hi all,

This is my first post and I'd be most grateful if you can assist me.

My wife and I recently bought a beautiful Acer Shirasawanum Jordan tree from our local garden centre and are growing it in a pot in our south-facing courtyard garden. Being very compact with a 12 foot fence at the rear, the garden is fairly sheltered with around half of it in shade at any given point in the day, with most of it receiving a dose of sunshine as the sun journeys across the sky. Our Acer is protected from some of the sunshine by the surrounding fences, but the leaves at the top have experienced fairly consistent sunshine as they remain exposed to the sun whichever angle it's coming from. Moreover, while there is a certain amount of shelter from wind, we've noticed it can still get quite blustery when the weather picks up.

We bought this particular variety not just because we love the way it looks, but because we understood that it can tolerate full sun if kept well-watered. However, advice online seems to be inconsistent on this, so we're not 100% sure.

Lately we've been noticing what we assume is leaf scorch, mostly on the upper leaves, but there's also some browning on some of the leaves around the middle of the tree. We understand this can be caused by a number of environmental factors (wind, too little water, too much water, too much sun), all of which are realistic possibilities with the prolonged periods of scorching sunshine and rain storms we've had recently. So we're not quite sure how to react, or which factor, or combination of factors, is responsible. I've provided pictures of the problem areas below, as well as a picture of the whole tree. I've also provided a picture of our garden as taken from an upstairs window, so you can see it's position in the garden.

What we'd like a bit of advice on, if you'd be so kind, is the following:
- Can this variety of Acer tolerate full sun?
- Does this look like leaf scorch to you? If not, what do you suspect it is?
- What do you think is the most likely cause?
- Is this normal, or should we be concerned?
- What measures, if any, should we take to address this?

Please forgive the length of this post - we just want to do right by the tree. Thanks very much for reading if you got this far, and thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

John-Paul

 

Cant help really, but all I will say is I know these types of Acers often suffer leaf damage, mostly from sun or cold dry winds in spring when the leaves are soft.
So, is it only recently that the leaves have started to look like this?

Definitely a difference between the top of the tree and the bottom, which kind of suggests it could be sun drying out the leaves or wind clipping across the top of the tree.

It wont alter this year now, but it might be worth trying it in a different part of the garden next year.