Garden: Maples run the gamut from lovable to not
Some maples are to love (sugar maples) and others not (Norway maples, because they’re an invasive species). But there’s more to maples than those two—including some you might like or dislike depending on where they are growing.
I once lived in a house where two stately silver maples graced the front yard. Aside from their enormous size, these two trees had little about them to love. Silver maples have soft wood, tend to drop branches and big flakes of bark, and the leaves have no color worth looking at in autumn. The roots can be frightening large and shallow.
On the positive side, silver maples grow very fast, tolerate almost any soil, and look nice in wild settings and swampy areas. I just wouldn’t want one near my home.
You’ll also find red maples in similar wet and wild settings. Red maples are very variable, and the best have much to offer: sturdy wood, cosmopolitan disposition, and reddish young leaves, flowers and seeds.
In autumn, the color of red maple foliage rivals and complements that of sugar maple. This tree is deservedly popular, so much so that superior varieties have been identified and named, some with upright form, others with leaves that stay red all season long or have particularly flamboyant autumn leaf color, and still others with various combinations of these qualities.
Before moving on to other lovable maples, let’s backtrack to another less desirable one. Although maple is not in its name, boxelder is a maple, one that, like silver maple, is fast-growing and weak-wooded. The only things this tree has going for it are that it grows just about anywhere and its overall form is pleasing.
Striped maple is another maple that I would not recommend planting, but that can be loved in its native, woodsy settings. It grows poorly outside of forests, and is not particularly notable in form or autumn leaf color. But you can enjoy its bright green leaves in summer and its distinctively striped bark as you walk in the woods year-round.
Sugar maple hardly needs mentioning because it’s so familiar for its strong wood, stately form and fiery fall color. On the downside, this tree is finicky about soil conditions.
I saved one of my favorite maples for last, and that is the paperbark maple, which asks to be both looked at and touched. This tree tolerates all sorts of soils and would, no doubt, be more popular if it was easier to propagate.