![]() Smaller North American maples include the chalk maple and the mountain maple-species that are in the 20- to 40-foot tall category. The intermediate maples, in the range of 60 to 80 feet, are types like the silver maple and red maple. The tallest of the American maples, such as black maple and sugar maple, can reach to 100 feet from top to bottom. The bark on a red maple will be scaly when the tree matures and a light grayish color.Ĭompare maple tree heights to tell one from another. For instance, the bark of chalk maple will always be smooth and a milky white shade. Combine this information to help identify the species. On older trees, bark can appear to be darker and rougher with peeling flakes. Bark: On a young Red Maple the bark can be smooth and gray. Fruit color ranges from red to green, becoming tan when mature. Examine the texture, looking to determine if the surface is scaly, rough, ridged, furrowed or smooth. The fruit consists of pairs of winged seeds, or keys, 1/21 inch in length on long, drooping stems. The sugar maple features from three to five pointed lobes, while the Florida maple’s three or five lobes possess more rounded tips.Examine the leaf shape closely, looking to ascertain the total number of lobes on it and trying to discern the shape of the lobes.If your spiles do not come with hooks you will need to buy some separately. You can get the spile and the bucket and lid from your local hardware store, farm store or sometimes local sugar bushes might have some available for sale. For this tool kit, you will need a drill, a maple spile with a hook, a hammer, a sap bucket and bucket lids. You will need a certain set of tools to successfully tap a maple tree, let’s call it your maple tool kit. Written by Georgette Kilgore Forestry, Trees and Tree Planting JOf all the types of Maple trees in North America, the Red Maple is the most widespread. Maple syrup season ends when the buds on the branches begin to open leaving any sap collected after that point with a bitter aftertaste. Maple syrup season typically takes place between February and April when daytime temperatures reach above 0℃ followed by cold nights which is when the sap starts to flow. The tree must be a minimum of 25.4+ centimetres in diameter for you to put one tap in, 45 cm for two taps, and 60 cm for three taps. To tell if a maple tree is mature you can look for the rough bark and measure the diameter of the tree at about shoulder length. Maple trees need to be mature before you can remove sap without harming the tree, much like how humans need to be a certain age before giving blood. A few things you should be aware of before tapping a tree is how old the tree needs to be, the temperature, and what tools you will need. Once you have successfully identified a maple tree it is time to tap it to access that delicious sap. A young maple’s bark will be stone-gray and very smooth, while a mature maple will have furrowed bark with large flat scales that seem to vertically peel off of the tree. Identifying a maple tree by its bark is a bit trickier as there is some variation between a young sugar maple and a mature one. ![]() This means the tree’s branches will grow in opposite directions making it easy for you to tell that it is a maple tree. If you look closely you will see each pair of buds is rotated about 180 degrees from the previous set, which helps keep the tree in balance when the buds become branches. Maple trees are unique as they are one of the few trees with opposite leaf buds. While at first it might be hard to tell the difference, maple trees have two very distinguishing features: the bark and the branching patterns. There are different types of maple trees and this post features some of the best maple trees that you can easily incorporate in your landscape. Most Canadians know how to identify a maple tree just by looking at the leaves for that unique maple shape, but how can you tell which tree is a maple tree once all of the leaves are gone?
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