Sugar maple, with its beautiful form and brilliant, multicolored display of fall color, is a popular shade tree in eastern North America. A stylized sugar maple leaf, which is Canada’s national symbol, truly reflects its value. Sugar maple is best known for its outstanding fall color that is so characteristic of New England states.1
Silver maple has been heavily planted as an ornamental in many urban areas because of its ease of transplanting and establishment, adaptability to a wide range of sites, rapid growth, and good form. The species also has been used for vegetative rehabilitation of surface mined lands as well as for bottomland reforestation.
Red maple is one of the most recognized trees with some part of the plant red all season long. From red flowers to its beautiful bark, red maple offers a variety of interests for the landscape in all seasons of the year. Pioneers used red maple bark to make ink and cinnamon-brown and black dyes.
Norway maples have invasive traits that enable them to spread aggressively. While these trees have demonstrated invasive traits, there is insufficient supporting research to declare them so pervasive that they cannot be recommended for any planting sites. Norway maple can be distinguished from other maple species by the milky white fluid that oozes when the stem of a leaf is broken.
The Japanese maple is a short tree in the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family, native to southeast Korea and central and south Japan, and noted for having many aesthetically pleasing forms. Weeping as well as upright varieties exist, and the species is well noted for its beautiful deep red and orange summer color that deepens into the fall.
Box elder, (Acer negundo), hardy and fast-growing tree, of the soapberry family (Sapindaceae), native to the central and eastern United States. The box elder was widely planted for shade by early settlers in the prairie areas of the United States. Female trees affected by attack from boxelder bugs in mid summer.
Black Maple is a large deciduous tree in the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family native to Eastern and Central USA. It differs from A. saccharum (sugar maple) by having darker bark, leafy stipules at the base of leaf stems and leaves that are 3-lobed and a darker green. This maple species has green leaves with three or five lobes, deeply grooved bark, and clusters of yellowish-green flowers.
Amur maple is a deciduous small tree or large shrub in the Sapindaceae (soapberry) family native to Asia that prefers cool summer climates and is one of the hardier maples. The leaves have a distinctive 3-lobed pattern with the central lobe being elongated. Fall color is red to orange.
This cultivar was introduced in 1925 by W.B. Clarke Nursery in San Jose, California. In the 1930s, seedlings of this cultivar were donated and planted around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. ‘Akebono’ is a stunning flowering Japanese cherry tree cultivar that has soft pink flowers that fade to white when they fully open. This is a deciduous cherry tree with snow-white spring flowers. The leaves are serrated.
This is a larval host plant to Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus). You may see three flights from February November in the deep south and two flights from May-September in the north. Leaves are toothed on the margin with 2 small red or green glands at the base of the blade. Prunus avium is generally grown as an ornamental cherry tree. It is native to Europe and Asia and has been cultivated in the U.S. since colonial times.