Dave Taft The red maple (Acer rubrum) is an attention-grabber in its brilliant autumn guise, but the tree also produces a dazzling spring show for the observant urban naturalist. The tree’s delicate blossoms are as red as its autumn leaves, but they last only a few days.
Even after the coldest winters, it takes only a few warm days for the pretty red flowers to appear. Red maples are often described as wind-pollinated, but insects may also be at the tree’s disposal. Wind pollination is a common trait of many northeastern tree species; birches, oaks and pines all produce remarkably elaborate, tiny flowers that release huge quantities of pollen into the air. This mass flowering generally occurs before the trees’ leaves emerge, so that pollen can ride through the woods on chill spring winds with minimal interference. It is not an efficient system. Pollen fails to fertilize passing cars, tree trunks, the woodland floor, migrant birds, dogs, people with allergies or puddles. But just often enough, a female red maple flower gets dusted.
Insect pollination is far more efficient â€" a leap forward in evolution. During spring warm spells, newly emerged flies and honey bees industriously work red maple flowers for pollen. A bee lands on a maple flower and is covered with pollen, then, lured to the throat of the next flower, delivers the goods. Little is left to chance, and both tree and insect benefit. Compared with the greenish flowers of birches and oaks, red maple flowers are downright showy; bright red and arranged in bunches.
Technically speaking, red maples are polygamodioecious â€" a mouthful that means that most red maples produce either male or female flowers; some produce both male and female flowers; and others produce flowers where both male and female parts are functional. Fortunately, the wind is completely objective in its pollination services. This is probably true for insects as well.
Red maples grow in woodlands throughout New York City, and select cultivars are planted as shade trees where space permits. Though known as a tree of the rich woods, they are remarkably adaptable, and tolerate wet or dry soils from Canada to Florida. Red maple leaves share the familiar five pointed shape of many maples, but unlike the sugar maple, or Norway maple, its leaf edges are serrated. Additionally, new stems, flowers and even the mature leaf petioles (leaf stems) are red â€" sometimes a very vibrant shade.
Red maples’ seeds, or samaras, mature by June and helicopter down, to the delight of children. Those seeds not immediately plastered to the tips of tiny noses may find their way to random patches of soil, where they sprout within days. This quirky quick-growing trick assures the seedlings several months of warm summer days in which to send out roots and first leaves. By autumn, many are already well rooted recruits to New York’s growing urban woodlands.
