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Issue No. 0163 - May 8, 2005
by Sue Sweeney
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Yes, Virginia, trees flower. While tree flowers are a source of
much of the misery of spring allergies, the flowers, together
with the buds, can be the most beautiful parts of the tree. The
maple clan has some of the most beautiful and distinctive
flowers in “treedom”.
Spring bloom order: First, while there’s still snow in the
shadows, the pom-poms of silver maples appear to feed our
precious early-waking pollinators. The silvers are closely
followed by their close cousins, the red maples. Then, 2 or 3
weeks later, mid spring is announced by the breathtakingly
beautiful but horribly destructive invasive lime green Norway
maples; their colors perfectly accenting all of the other spring
flowers. After that, in late April – early May the elegant,
lordly sugar maples, the box elders (the curious ash-like,
compound-leaf maple), and the attractive but invasive sycamore
maples bloom at about the same time.
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| Picture: Norway maple flowers
beginning to close as they age, Strawberry Hill, Stamford CT April 2005 |
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Each of the maples has a distinct flower, except, of course, the
reds and the silvers which I suspect interbreed for the sole
reason of driving botanists crazy.
Silver Maples (Acer saccharinum): I find it puzzling
that maples with such remarkably different leaves and
seeds, and, occasionally very different bark, can be so
hard to distinguish when it comes to buds and flowers.
The silvers that I know have flower clusters similar to
reds, but duller, darker, and not as showy. If the tree
doesn’t have the silver’s distinct bark or a give off
bad odor from a broken twig, it still might be a silver
(or a mostly-silver crossbred-mutt). Since reds and
sliver bloom while it’s still much too cold to leaf out,
sometimes you can only guess whether it is a red or a
silver at the time of bloom. (Look around the tee, you
could get lucky and find some of last year’s leaves.)
Silvers bloom reliably every year.
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Pictures: Silver maple flower
inspection is also complicated by the height of the trees’ lowest
branches; a tall ladder would be a good identification aid. First
picture: Strawberry Hill; second two: Scalzi Park. Both of these trees
produce characteristic silver maple seeds and leaves but both have red
maple-looking bark. All Stamford CT March 2005 |
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| Red Maples (Acer rubrum): The red maple
blooms every year, and every other year tends to be an even more
spectacular. The reds’ flower clusters, from a distance, look like fuzzy
red balls or pom-poms, starting out very red and turning more yellow and
than orangey before dying. The flowers are showy and are easy to spot
from a distance. One clue to the red or silver mystery is that the reds
generally start bearing seeds at a much younger age than the silvers.
Reds can start when they are around 4 years old but silvers need to be
11 years or so. So a very young maple tree with the fuzzy pom-poms is
more likely to a red. |
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Pictures: A red maple against the sky
in the front yard of an apartment complex on Hoyt Street, Stamford CT
(2004); up close at the First Presbyterian, Stamford CT April 2005 |
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Norway Maples (Acer plantanoides): The Norways produce
showy corsage-like “bouquets” of small lime green
flower-looking flowers; some cultivars can have red or
maroon sepals around the flowers. Astoundingly, the US
Forest Service, in a May 2005 update of its entry on the
ubiquitous Norway maples in the FEIS data base noted:
“The biology and ecology of Norway maple are not
well-studied in North America. More research is needed
to better understand its key biological traits, habitat
requirements and limitations, and interactions with
native North American flora and fauna.”
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Pictures: Norway maple flowers,
respectively at Scalzi Park and Strawberry Hill, Stamford CT April 2005
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Sugar Maples (Acer saccharum): The sugars, the lofty,
long-lived nobles of the maple world, have tiny, light
olive green flowers on long, thin, flexible stems. The
tree, from a distance appears to be fringed, so at this
stage looks much like the red oaks which have light
green flowers in hanging tassels and vertically striped,
light colored trunks. The red oaks, though, will have
tiny oak leaves at the top the flowers and the flowers
are little balls along the sides the fringy stems.
Sugar maples are said to not start producing seeds
until they are 30 to 40 years old, and then don’t
necessarily produce flowers (and seeds) every year. Each
maple seems to get to decide for itself how often it
wishes to flower. Some do it every year; but for other
the interval can up to seven years. The Norways, in
contrast, make millions of seeds every year, which is
one of the reasons why they effectively out-compete the
native maples (and almost everything else in sight).
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Pictures: The first picture, of one of
the lovely sugar maples at the First Presbyterian Church, Stamford CT,
was taken in 2003; this tree hasn’t had more than a flower or two since
then. The second two pictures are of one of the young sugar maples in a
vest pocket park on Strawberry Hill Ave., Stamford CT. This tree blooms
every year but its neighbor, probably purchased by the Parks Department
as part of the same nursery lot, hasn’t bloomed for some time. The
non-flowering tree puts its energy into making energy—it leafs out
significantly faster than its flowering sibling. April 2005 |
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Box Elders Maples (Acer negundo): The short-lived,
sometimes “weedy” box elders flower reliably every year,
starting fairly young, but flowers don’t always turn
into seeds. Like the sugars, the trees look fringed when
flowering. The flowers come out late enough so that by
the time they get really fringy, the compound leaves are
half out as well. (With the sugars, the leaves usually
follow the flowers.) While the flowers are fringy like
the sugars, the details of the flower structure are very
different (see the pictures). In addition, the box
elders have a smooth-ish or scaly bark and trade-mark
bright olive-green twigs. The sugars in contrast have
graceful vertical fissures in their bark, revealing a
reddish or orangey under-bark, and the sugar twigs are
brown or mahogany.
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Pictures: Box elder beginning to flower
Spring 2004, Cove Island; box elder in full flower April 2005 Grayrock
Street, Stamford CT |
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Sycamore maples (Acer pseudoplatanus): This alien,
invasive maple, which is popping up all over town, has a
grape-like hanging clusters of lime-green flowers which
appear with leaves. You can often see the stems left
over from last year’s seeds.
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Pictures: Sycamore maple in full flower
April 2005 Forest Street, Stamford CT May 2005 |
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