SHADES OF MAPLE: THE BUDS
The Monday Garden, Eco-gardening at its best
March 27, 2005, Issue 157
Most tree buds are wonderful tiny sculptures, joys of winter and very early spring that are too often left unappreciated. Maple tree buds are no exception. To add to The Monday Garden series on our wonderful native maples and not-so-wonderful invasive ones, this issue covers the buds.
It’s not hard to distinguish sugar (Acer saccharum), box elder (Acer negundo), Norway (Acer platanoides), and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) maples by the buds alone. You also can able tell that a tree is a maple and definitely a red (Acer rubrum) or a silver (Acer saccharinum), but telling a red from a silver by the buds alone is a tricky business, beyond the scope of this article (and usually my ken).
picture: early waking insect embraces the terminal bud of a young red maple, Mill River at Scalzi Park March 2005.
Ash or maple? To get started, North American trees with opposite branching are most likely to be ashes or maples. You can rule out the ashes by looking for a flat-topped, thick bud with a pronounced triangular shape; look also for a diamond pattern to the bark in mature trees.