Plant of the Week
Silver Maple
Latin: Acer saccharinum
The most important decision we face when designing a landscape is our choice
of trees. If we choose poorly, our planting will be plagued with this faulty
choice for years to come and the grand scheme we see in our mind's eye will
never be realized.
Yet, we are mortal creatures prone to impatience. We want to see things grow
and develop. Surely this impatience is what keeps people planting silver maples,
a tree that - despite its many faults - is the twentieth most commonly planted
shade tree in American gardens.
Silver maples (Acer saccharinum) are big, fast growing trees capable
of reaching 80 feet in height with a spread almost equal their height. They are
not orderly trees with symmetrical form; every bud seems to seek a leadership
role in growth, resulting in trees that branch low to the ground and produce an
abundance of long, wispy branches. These branches are often overly long for
their diameter and overly brittle, making them prone to breakage during wind and
ice storms.
The silver maple leaf is a long-petioled affair with the blade three to five
inches long and wide. It is 5-lobed with each lobe dissected with varying
degrees of jagged and deep serrations. During the summer the slightest puff of
breeze causes leaves to flash their silver underbellies like a school of shiners
in a shallow stream. Fall color is yellow but its fall display is frequently
mediocre.
Female trees produce clusters of red flowers along the stem in late winter
that are an early signal of the coming spring. The seeds mature in May and
germinate immediately if given a moist location. An undocumented and
unappreciated role the silver maple plays is in introducing our nation's
children to the joys of nature. Because it is so widely grown across the
country, surely no other tree has entertained and delighted more children with
it's helicopter-like seeds on a bright May morning. Perhaps the next Thoreau or
Carson will be awakened to the joys of nature by the whirl of the samaras as
they spiral towards the ground.
Americans are always in a rush so not surprisingly there is a strong demand
for fast growing trees to provide quick shade. For the past 30 years I've
watched a shade tree planting grow from saplings to mature trees. During the
first 15 years the silver maple outgrew its competitors and was about five feet
taller than its rivals, but with its typical unruly form. But by the 20th year,
the oaks had overtaken it in size and far exceeded it in grandeur. Around its
25th year an ice storm swept in and stripped it of its limbs and it was removed,
while its stouter silvan cousins survived with little damage.
Most trees in our landscapes and park plantings should be those with the
promise of outliving us. But don't be too quick to dismiss these fast growers -
the silver maples, the Bradford pears, the willows - for they give immediate
effect and can provide the early framework for our gardens. They also make it
possible - and necessary for that matter - to redesign the landscape after a few
years to correct the mistakes we made the first time around.
The silver maple is an adaptable grower that thrives in a wide array of
conditions, growing about as well on mine reclamation sites as in good garden
soils. Like most big trees, it should have at least six hours of sunlight, but
otherwise will grow almost as successfully on mine spoils as garden soils. Once
established it has good drought tolerance, but the tactic it uses to achieve
this trait is to drop its inner leaves as drought stress worsens. Like most
maples it is shallow rooted, making it difficult to grow other plants beneath
it.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
April 11, 2003
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