Japanese maple high temperatures management

I live in CA, zone 10b. In the summer I get up to 120F

Every year as soon as temperatures go above 85F I put my shade screen up.

Nerveless, JM suffer and get burnt tips or worst…

From a lot of reading and discussions in other platforms I see people saying that misting or getting the leaves wet in full sun, in this case under shade screen is ideal rob get the tree internal temperature lower and avoid burnt! Is this correct? Cause I’ve always thought it would actually reflect heat and do worst… maybe not when under shade screen?

Another suggestion I had was to use wilt pruf because it works wonders! Any experienced with this? Side effects like poor photosynthesis? It only lasts 6 weeks so, once the temperature goes down it might be gone…

Thank you in advance

Most of my maples spent the summer in the sun without burnt tips… watered and misted three times a day (until the drought measures hit, twice a day since). I ended up moving some of them under a large ash tree when the temperatures went insane, so they’d have full sun all morning, partial shade from noon to 4pm, then full sun again.

The misting/wetting the leaves helps in a very simple way… evaporative cooling.

What I mean by insane temperatures:


The temperature at the top is from an external sensor close to my trees, the temperature at the bottom is indoors.

I’ve mulched my pots to keep the water in the root zone, which seems to have helped a lot.

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Meanwhile my maples pretty much just hate me. :expressionless: :weary::sob:

A weak tree will always take more damage in extreme temperatures than a healthy one.

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I’ll never complain about 105 degree temps again!

It got a bit cooler since, but we still occasionally hit 100F+ in the afternoons. The nights are around 50F now, so the trees can recover a bit. A lot of trees got confused by the temperature drop and gave me a second spring (malus, citrus, acer…).

hello, i have palmatum growing in an open green house, the T° can grow ut to 50°C maxi (122°F). They still grow and the only issue I have is small black spots on the tips of the shoots (the young branches growing). Since this year, I mist my trees when i have more than 45°C (113 °F) and since i put a wintering veil + avoiding the contact beetwen the branches tips and the greenhouse plastic, i don’t have any black spots anymore.