re: Japanese Maples in Baton Rouge

LSU runs an Ag research facility in Hammond. It's been a few years since I've seen any updates but they had something like 150 varieties planted for performance testing in our climate. You can easily go broke going down the rabbit hole of varieties.

I bought a handful from ConfierKingdom in Oregon. Those have all done great. I also bought a few conifers from them that theoretically should have performed well in our zone. Several of those died suddenly.

Last month I found myself at Maple Ridge nursery in ATL area, I mentioned this as they had a lot of the same plants. They mentioned that the root stock was probably the culprit. She told me the variety of root stock they use for conifers there. I have no clue if there are options like that for Maples. But it makes me more likely to buy maples from closer to our zone.

There's also a maple specific nursery a bit outside of Auburn. Never been, but I bet it's cool.

Found it... Millstone Japanese Maple Nursery