Plant of the Week
Sugar Maple, Hard Maple
Latin: Acer saccharum
It’s official - Mundare, Alberta won! During the summer, I was fortunate
enough to serve as a judge in the Communities In Bloom program that tallies
quality of life characteristics of communities across Canada. My partner and I
visited 11 communities in seven provinces, all with fewer than 1,000 people,
where we were shown what pride, people and plants can do to make even the
smallest communities better places to live. While the sugar maple,
Acer saccharum, is not well adapted to the cold, flat prairies surrounding
Mundare in western Canada, it's no doubt the most recognizable plant symbol for
our neighbors to the north.
The sugar or hard maple is a big tree capable of reaching 100 feet with a
spread half its height. Its native range includes all of the eastern woodlands
from the southeastern corner of Manitoba to the Ozarks in northern Arkansas and
east to the southern Appalachians in northern Georgia. The sugar maple
look-alikes of the Ouachitas in southwestern Arkansas are the chalk or Florida
maple, depending on the taxonomic treatment used to define the species.
The sugar maple leaf is easily recognizable as the stylized, three-lobed leaf
on the Canadian flag. The flag is of relatively recent vintage, having only been
adopted in 1965 when Prime Minister Lester Pearson encouraged the Canadian
legislature to develop a new flag as a symbol of national unity as the
centennial of the Federation approached in 1967.
No other tree better symbolizes the arrival of fall than the reds, oranges
and yellows of sugar maples, as countless busloads of New England tourists can
attest.
The Communities In Blooms program is in its ninth year, beginning as the
brainchild of Raymond Carriere, a parks director in suburban Montreal.
Communities first compete at the provincial level with winners then able to go
on for competition for national bragging rights. The program categorizes
communities in a dozen different sizes based on population.
Eight different criteria are used for evaluation, with 60 percent of the
points coming from beautification kinds of considerations while the remaining
points come from community related issues such as volunteerism, recycling
efforts and other environmental issues. Scenic beauty is not a part of the
evaluation criteria, so quaint fishing villages on the coast have no advantage
in scoring over small communities on the windswept prairies.
Visiting these communities was an eye-opening experience. Small towns
everywhere are having a difficult time maintaining population. Children grow up
and move to the city, as much for the perceived life style advantages as for
employment.
To remain viable, communities have to create the kind of atmosphere that
makes the decision to move away a difficult choice. By involving people of all
ages in the clean up, fix up, pretty up campaigns that are a part of all
successful CIB programs, residents become stakeholders in their communities.
Because these small towns don’t have the resources to hire staff, volunteers
are the backbone of everything from litter control to watering the hanging
baskets on Main Street. While beautification alone can’t solve the economic
issues challenging small communities, it can provide a rallying point to bring
the community together to address the larger concerns.
The CIB program was imported to the United States in 2002 where it is known
as America In Bloom. The goals and guidelines for participation are adapted from
the Canadian program. Fayetteville was one of the three dozen communities that
participated in the AIB program in its first year, going on to win against the
two other cities competing in its size category. This year, it competed in the
International Challenge, going up against communities in Canada and Great
Britain. To view the 2003 AIB award winners visit their website at
www.americainbloom.org.
But, back to the sugar maple. It's well adapted in most of Arkansas with the
exception of the Delta region and the southernmost counties. Sugar maples are
slower growing trees than the red or silver maple, so be patient. This slower
growth makes the tree a longer lived specimen in the landscape and one that
will, given time, be a beautiful addition to the fall landscape. Trees usually
don’t start showing good fall color development until they reach sexual
maturity, which usually takes about 20 years.
By: Gerald Klingaman, retired
Extension Horticulturist
- Ornamentals
Extension News -
October 3, 2003
Back to Archives E - H
Back to Archives M - P
Back to Archives Q - T
|
