I'd like to try to identify the maple street trees around my block. 1. I think this tree is one Ron B identified as Acer saccharinum, Silver Maple. I'm including this for comparison with what comes next. Note the deeply lobed leaves. There are some coloured leaves on the ground, but the tree is essentially still green. 2. I posted this tree in the photos forum as Acer saccharinum, Silver Maple, but Ron B thought it might be A. x freemanii, Freeman maple (not sure I have the botanical name correctly written). Ron pointed out that the leaves are not nearly as deeply lobed as the tree above. The leaves on the tree are almost entirely still green. 3. If it weren't for tree #2, just knowing there's a hybrid between red maple and silver maple (Freeman Maple), I'd have guessed this was it, as the leaves look like red maple leaves to me in shape, and like Silver maple leaves from the underside, but they've turned yellow, not red. But the leaves don't look anything like those on tree #2, so I don't know what it is. Short petioles. [Edited Oct 20]Here are a couple more photos. From right there on the street, the leaves on the tree and the ground look very yellow, but from a distance, the tree looks more orange. 4. From the long petioles, I think this is Acer platanoides, Norway Maple. But the leaf shape and the bark don't seem right, so I wondered if it was Sugar Maple. I think the petioles are too long though. It's looking quite yellow now. 5. This one is a total mystery to me. The only one in my book that shows such jagged leaf edges is Acer glabrum, Douglas Maple, but I don't know that tree at all. It hasn't turned colour yet. Some petioles short, some long. [Edited Oct 20]Michael asked for better photos. I got a lot of truly terrible photos, but here's what I can post. 6. Just confirming - this is Acer pseudoplatanus, Sycamore Maple? These are just starting to turn, sort of brown. Within two blocks, there are also street tree Acer cappadocicum, A. macrophyllum, A. rufinerve, and A. negundo, and newly planted A. griseum and A. platanoides 'Princeton Gold'. A pretty good collection for learning about maples.
1 - definitely A. saccharinum, and probably one of the cut-leaf cultivars. 2 - fairly sure this is also A. saccharinum, it looks to be within the range of natural variation in the species. 3 - not sure what this one is! 4 - odd, the foliage looks like A. platanoides, but the bark doesn't at all. Any seed samaras you can get pics of? 5 - can you get some non-silhouette photos of the leaves? 6 - yes, Acer pseudoplatanus. Where a maple has seeds on, pics of them are very useful.
Thanks, Michael. The only samaras I noticed were on the ground in front of the Acer pseudoplatanus, split in half now. When you say "seed samaras", are you distinguishing them from other samaras?I know this might have to wait for flowers and samaras next year. I'll add them in the spring.
I have added photos to the first posting for trees 3 and 5. No samaras in sight. I see that I have note in my book next to Acer saccharum that Joseph Lin told me there's a sugar maple on this block. So maybe number 4 is the one he meant.
Joseph Lin wrote me that thought #3 was the sugar maple and #4 was Norway. Those leaves in #3 look like our flag? Joseph's point was that they have few teeth.
The story I heard about the Canadian flag is that it was meant to represent a generic maple, not a specific species. (Don't know if it was the true story!) Some good leaf pics here: http://www.henriettesherbal.com/botany/acer-pics.html For example: Acer saccharum 1
http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=53893&highlight=canadian+flag http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=1608&highlight=canadian+flag two complete thread :-)
Thanks for the forum links, alex66. At the second link, the Elements of the Canadian Flag link should go here. The link to Daniel's photo shows more what I was thinking of for sugar maple. Maf, from your Acer saccharum 1 link, the two bottom leaf shapes are more what I'm seeing. Straley (Trees of Vancouver, UBC Press, 1992) described Sugar Maple as "generally a taller, slender tree ...", and this was the widest on the block, so that and the yellow colour were not what I was expecting for that species.
LOL. I wish you'd warned me not to click on the video! But the drawing is good - helpful too! Almost. Except for the red colour, when what I'm seeing is yellow, turning orange.
It's spring, tra-la, so here are flowers, though actually, I think I'm too late for flowers and they're mostly developing samaras. Or the photos are taken from too far away to see what they are. These are big trees lining our streets. Leaves are in the first posting. Tree 1- A. saccharinum (not in question unless it's some fancy form, for comparison with Tree 2) Tree 2 - A. saccharinum or A. freemanii. Is there such a thing as freeman maple flowers? There doesn't seem to be on Wikipedia. If there is, do they look like this? Tree 3 - This looks like A. saccharum, sugar maple, right ? Tree 4 - Doesn't look like A. platanoides. Another A. saccharum? Tree 5 - no suggestions yet - A. rubrum? The city's tree list does show one Acer rubrum at this address, but then, it doesn't show any sugar maple, and at the end of the block it shows only one maple, a Norway, and I'm pretty sure those two are silvers. So never mind that list.
Doesn't mean a thing, there's lots that isn't on wikipedia (plus lots that is, but shouldn't be!). Yes it does have flowers; whether it produces viable seeds or not, I don't know.
I'm finally getting close to IDs on these trees. Tree 3 seems to have sugar maple samaras. As does tree 4, which in habit and bark (posted earlier) seemed so different. The only samaras I could find were way at the top. That leaves tree 5, that I thought might be red maple. I was unable to find any samaras, unless this one from the ground counts. The only other maples on the block are the other two here, a sycamore maple and two silvers. This doesn't seem to look like it belongs to anything, does it? And from the leaves, I wondered if this wasn't really a freeman maple, though the earlier posting of the spring flowers made me think it was a red maple.
Thanks for confirming that, Ron. I was feeling pretty sure of those, though it's not making me feel I'm any closer to identifying a sugar maple when there are not any samaras. I'm attaching some more photos to show how different these two sugar maples look. The first two photos show tree 4 on the left, tree 3 on the right (the darker orange leaves belong to tree 3 on the right). In the leaf photo (brightened considerably from what my camera captured), the colour difference isn't so obvious, but the leaf shapes are very different. Here are leaves from tree 4, the one I kept thinking looked like Norway maple. Here are leaves from tree 3, which I thought looked more like red or Freeman maple leaves, but now I'm aware that those would have more more marginal teeth. These 3-lobed leaves look more like big-leaf maple very young leaves (though maybe if were to get those together, I'd notice a difference). But it also has some leaves that look just like those on the other tree. I'm sure the 3-lobed leaves are from this tree and not from tree 6, which is far enough away not to be confusing the issue, and anyway, you can see the leaves with this shape on the tree in the leaf comparison photo at the start of this post.
Maybe you like the puzzle of trying to ID these - but if not, the City of Vancouver provides a data file describing every street tree in the city on their open data page. The trees are listed by street address, and the file provides the botanical (species, genus, and cultivar) and common names, among other data elements. Vancouver Street Trees
Thanks for posting that, LemonTart. I have that listing. I was going to say how not accurate it is, but I'll just say not all that accurate. For instance, on that block, the city's list shows for maples, going east to west: SYCAMORE MAPLE RED MAPLE NORWAY MAPLE NORWAY MAPLE Here, in the same order, we've identified the trees as being: Sugar maple Sugar maple Red maple or Freeman maple Silver maple (I think there are two of those at the end of the block) So actually, tree for tree, none of these is correct on that list. The city's ornamental cherry listings are probably the most inaccurate. I've spent a lot of time with the list, and it's helpful when I have no idea what a tree is and need a hint (which I then look up to confirm), and I like it for planning a walk to learn new trees, or to look for an area with a lot of one tree, that might be a good place to photograph that kind of tree.
No need to wonder any more about what these nice trees are, as they are ex-trees now. At least one of them had a fungus growing on it, and the building next to the trees is undergoing repair to the membrane over their garage, and they reported to the city that the tree roots were damaging the garage walls.
