Anyone know what kind of growth rate I can expect?

This was my first order from Sooner. I've looked at their website a lot over the past few years. I was very pleased with the tree I received. It's about five feet tall and looks very healthy. Packing was great, but still fairly easy to extract from the box. :) I've received some orders where I thought I was going to have to bust out a chain saw to get my plants out! ;P

So I posted on the Maples Forum, and two people described the Bowhall maple, and it seemed perfect. I hope it is a little more brilliant in color than the "earthen orange" that bboy reports. My understanding is that it has some varied color, with orange as the more prominent one, with some red and yellow.

Of course color varies with specific weather in any given season, and also with location. Mine will start turning soon, but newly planted little trees often don't color anything like more mature, established trees.

Keep it well watered for two or more years. I have found that red maples, while easy to transplant, are susceptible to droughts for the first two or three years. I learned by hard experience! But after they are established, they can be very drought resistant. We had some dry weather this year, and in spite of my planting it very carefully, and mulching, and trying to water as needed, it wilted a couple of times when I was just a day or two late getting water to it.

--Spruce

On the other hand, Jacobson, North American Landscape Trees (1996, Ten Speed, Berkeley) says

brilliant yellow-orange to red-orange fall color

Using Google just now makes me think more than one clone has been grown under the name. The tree I am talking about produces smaller, more shallowly lobed leaves with quieter fall color. Ones like it are shown in the search result, as well as at least one other type with larger(?), more deeply lobes leaves and intense fall color.