This beautiful tree has a striking gray and white striped bark. The height of the adult tree is six to eight meters. You can help the young tree to reach its beautiful column shape by pruning it slightly. The leaves turn a bright yellow in autumn. Acer Campestre “Green Collumn”Ī field maple tree with green leaves in the shape of a column. The crown is dense with dark green foliage. The crown can reach a considerable width of up to three meters. The Nanum has a maximum height of two to three meters with a spherical crown. Acer Campestre “Nanum”Ī somewhat smaller variety is the Campestre Nanum. The leaf is dark green with a yellow autumn coloring. The height of the tree is between 8 and 12 meters as an adult tree. The ‘Elsrijk’ has a beautifully closed crown in a wide egg shape. The tree is suitable for landscaping, but can also be pruned as a hedge. Field maple has bright green leaves, which emerge reddish and often have a yellow autumn color. The necks of electric guitars are also commonly made from maple.The field maple tree is a medium-sized tree with an irregularly rounded crown. Because of this property, maple wood is used to make musical instruments, including violins, violas, and cellos. Dried maple wood is used in smoking foods like fish and meat, and charcoal from maple is an important part of the process to make Tennessee whiskey.Īdditionally, maple is considered a tonewood: a wood that carries soundwaves well. It is used as timber, and to manufacture items like bowling pins, butcher’s blocks, baseball bats, and recurve bows for archery. Some maple species are also valued for their wood, particularly sugar maple in North America and sycamore maple Acer pseudoplatanus in Europe. Most maple species can be used to make syrup, but the sugar maple and the black maple are preferred, because they produce the sweetest and lightest colored syrup. It takes 40 to 50 gallons 151.4 to 189.3 liters) of tree sap to produce one gallon (3.8 liters) of commercial syrup. The sap is boiled to thicken it, and filtered to produce the amber-colored syrup people put on their pancakes, include in recipes, and use to make candy. The tree is tapped to collect the sap, usually only about 10 percent from any individual tree, so the growth and health of the tree is not affected. Maple tree sap naturally contains a higher amount of sugar than any other tree.

One of the maple’s biggest claims to fame is its sap, from which maple syrup is made. The seeds usually require a period of dormancy as the seed coat is softened and weathered-a process known as stratification-before they can germinate.

One tree can release hundreds of thousands of seeds at a time. Depending on the species, the seeds can be small and green or larger and yellow or orange. Because of the spinning action, the pods are sometimes referred to as helicopters or whirlybirds. Each pod encloses a pair of seeds attached to a flattened “wing” of papery tissue, and the pod is designed to be picked up by the wind and then spin as it falls, to carry the seeds a considerable distance. Seeds: One of maple’s distinctive characteristics is the seedpods it produces, called samaras. Maples flower in late winter or early spring, usually with or just after the appearance of new leaves. The flowers are either male or female and pollination is typically performed by insects, which carry the pollen from the male to the female flowers. Each flower is small, composed of four or five sepals and four or five petals. Most maple trees have green leaves during the spring and summer, but some may have red, bronze, or purplish leaves.įlowers: Maple blossoms may be green, yellow, orange, or red and usually grow in clusters of five. Exceptions to the usual leaf shape are species with leaves divided into three leaflets, such as paperbark maple Acer griseum and vine-leafed maple Acer cissifolium, and a few with simple, undivided leaves, like the hornbeam maple Acer carpinifolium. The typical leaf shape may be slender, almost lacy, like the Japanese maple Acer palmatum, or wide in the middle like the Norway maple Acer platonoides. Leaves: The majority of maples have the easily recognized, hand-shaped leaves with five points. Maples are often found growing along riverbanks, and they have dense, fibrous roots that can help control erosion, but also inhibit the growth of other plants around their base. The majority of species prefer a temperate climate, although a few are drought tolerant. Most maple species are deciduous trees, although some grow more like shrubs, and a few in southern Asia and the Mediterranean are evergreen.

Types of deciduous plants maple trees