Ed Wood was an American film director who made some of the worst movies ever committed to acetate. He truly gave the term "B-Movie" a standard by which all others were judged. These movies were terrible to the point of being unwatchable, and by all accounts Ed Wood himself was a bit of an odd duck. He thought of himself as an Orson Wells type who could single handedly manage all aspects of a movie production - and attempted to do so with almost none of the required skills or talents, armed only with a determination to make movies and a comfortable angora sweater.
No joke.
His movies include "Glen or Glenda", a bizarre pseudo-documentary about transvestiteism, and more famously, "Plan 9 from Outer Space", a disjointed tale involving aliens, police, and the original Vampira.
His life and work were brought back into the public eye by Tim Burton in the 1994 film, "Ed Wood", starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau and Sarah Jessica Parker. I'm a huge fan of this movie. It portrays Ed Wood and his cohorts in an admirable light, and it includes a memorable scene where Landau, as an aged junkie Bela Lugosi, shouts "Pull the String!!" over and over again. It's a piece of work.
Fast forward to last weekend when I visited a garden center that was advertising a 40% off tree sale for the fall. I think it's a raw deal that most garden centers are forced to deeply discount trees at the exact time of year when homeowners should be planting them. That's another matter, though.
My wife and I had the general idea that we wanted a japanese maple for our back patio, but had no ideas beyond that. After a bit of nosing around, we found a 5 ft. maple that was unlike any that we'd seen before; it has green leaves instead of the more common red, it has bark that turns green in cool weather (how sweet is that?) and according to the sell tag it grows with an "open habit" - meaning that it can easily be coerced into growing with a lot of air space in between the branches. We were most impressed. I checked the tag and to my surprise it was labeled "Acer Palmatum 'Ed Wood'". This piqued my curiosity.
It turns out that a gentleman by the name of Edsal Wood was the owner of a seedling nursery in Oregon called Bonsai Village. In addition specializing in bonsai and specialty conifers, Edsal Wood also developed new varieties of japanese maples. I know now that it has no relation to the movie, but at the store the name slowed me down enough to take another look and we decided to buy the tree. Proof that branded plants work, I suppose.
The tree is home and planted and seems to be doing well so far. I was surprised about the relative lack of available online information about this type of tree. Last weekend was the first I'd seen one, and I can't think of any maples I've seen that look like this one. I'll have to post some pictures. On a related note, I encountered two different employees in the tree department as I was buying and picking up this tree. Both of them stopped to tell me that they were glad I picked Ed Wood variety, and mentioned that "not enough people appreciate the way they looked". In retrospect, there may be some comment here about my taste...but at the time it struck me that both of these guys were happy that the tree was going to get planted somewhere before the end of the season. They acted as if I was adopting the tree - and I think that's a great vibe to get off of a person who's selling you a living thing.