diff --git a/docs/index.html b/docs/index.html
index d44428ded..e7fb9b731 100644
--- a/docs/index.html
+++ b/docs/index.html
@@ -1672,6 +1672,13 @@ the one that is currently running Ant.</p>
       disabled)</td>
     <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
   </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">maxmemory</td>
+    <td valign="top">Max amount of memory to allocate to the forked VM
+      (ignored if fork is disabled)</td>
+    <td align="center" valign="top">all</td>
+    <td align="center" valign="top">No</td>
+  </tr>
   <tr>
     <td valign="top">failonerror</td>
     <td valign="top">Stop the buildprocess if the command exits with a
diff --git a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Java.java b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Java.java
index ff39060de..c842274e7 100644
--- a/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Java.java
+++ b/src/main/org/apache/tools/ant/taskdefs/Java.java
@@ -200,6 +200,17 @@ public class Java extends Task {
         this.dir = d;
     }
 
+    /**
+     * -mx or -Xmx depending on VM version
+     */
+    public void setMaxmemory(String max){
+        if (Project.getJavaVersion().startsWith("1.1")) {
+            createJvmarg().setValue("-mx"+max);
+        } else {
+            createJvmarg().setValue("-Xmx"+max);
+        }
+    }
+
     /**
      * Executes the given classname with the given arguments as it
      * was a command line application.