Although it’s still cold and wintry outside, there are signs of spring everywhere. Red-winged Blackbirds and American Robins have returned to the northland. Boxelder bugs are seen sunning themselves on the south sides of trees and buildings. Black-capped Chickadees are singing their spring time song. And another sure sign of spring is the maple sap is running within the maple trees.
There are over 100 species of maples in the world. About two thirds of these are found in Asia. Here in North America we have only 13 native maple species. All of our native maples share some common traits such as opposite pairs of leaves. Each leaf has anywhere from 3-9 main veins radiating from a central base. All maples produce pairs (rarely in 3’s) of winged seeds called samara, on a single stalk. These winged seeds are often called helicopters because of the way they rotate to the ground after falling from the tree. And all maple seeds are an important source of food for wildlife.
One of our most common maples is the Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum). It’s a medium sized tree averaging about 50-70 feet tall at maturity. It has a single large trunk with many ascending branches and a full round crown. Sugar Maples can live up to 200 years old.
Like other maples, the Sugar Maple has oppositely attached leaves. Each leaf has five lobes (occasionally three) with pointed tips and a wavy leaf edge, which is called the margin. The leaves are yellowish green on top and paler below.
This tree is the well-known source for maple syrup and maple sugar. It takes approximately 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of maple syrup. In spring, any broken twig or branch will leak the watery sap. These natural taps attract many species of birds and mammals to drink.
Also called Hard Maple, the Sugar Maple has extremely hard wood that has been used in make furniture, flooring and cabinets for hundreds of years and continues today.Another lesser-known maple is the Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum). It grows in wet to moist soils, often growing in pure stands in the floodplain of large rivers and lakes. It is one of the first trees to send out flowers each spring which are often confused with leaf buds to the casual observer. Leaf buds and their resulting leaves don’t come out until after the tree is finished flowering later in spring.
The bark of the older trees is characteristic, with long strips that often peel and curl at the ends. Silver Maples produce seeds every year but it also produced extremely heavy crops every two or three years. It’s often called Silver-leaf maple, because the underside of the leaves are silvery in appearance.
The Silver Maple also produces a sap that can be collected and boiled down to make maple syrup. The yield is only slightly lower than the Sugar Maple but just as tasty.
The sap flows in early spring when the nighttime temperatures drop below freezing and the day time temps go above freezing. A typical tree can produce anywhere from 5-50 gallons of sap each spring.
Until next time…