The Hunt for Red Maples

 

If you’re a bit of a tree novice (and who wasn’t at some point in their life?), now is the time to find the red maple trees in Central New Jersey.

 

When you’re out walking and you notice a subtle red blur of tiny flowers up in a tree, that’s a red maple.

 

I went for a walk this morning looking for all the red maples in my neighborhood.

 

This is not a red maple (duh) but I always find interesting tree things to photograph when I’m on a tree identification walk. The break of sunshine just after a morning rain is the best time to photograph trees!

 

This old red maple has seen better days.

 

You don’t necessarily have to look UP to see if a red maple is in the neighborhood. The blossoms fall off the trees after about a week.

 

A little aside: on my red maple walk I came across this huge pile of steaming mulch. I am scared. I think I’ll walk away.

 

Or maybe I’ll just peer closer for a minute. I don’t even want to think about why it would be steaming. 

UPDATE! My earthy colleague tells me that steaming mulch is a good thing! He said, “It means it’s working, breaking down the nutrients for the soil.” Ok, COOL!

 

A sweetgum tree has to be nearby! 

Going for tree walks is a great way to learn things about your camera. I like to take my time exposing pictures, learning about light and composition, and looking for something interesting that might find it’s way into a design project. Take this gumball on asphalt art I created, above. This is a nice texture that I can tuck away in my “textures” folder for use as a low opacity layer in a book design to add texture to a background. (I’ll stamp out the gumball first.)

 

Ok, back to red maples: this blossom has a lot of yellow. But the overall glow over the tree is still reddish. That’s a pretty good way to identify red maple trees in your neighborhood.

 

You probably wouldn’t know that this is the trunk of a red maple, until you look up and realize that it is covered with tiny red blossoms. My young Armstrong red maple is probably around 12- to 15-years old now. You can see her at planting time here.

 

This branch on my October Glory red maple will help illustrate how easy it is to distinguish a red maple from a sugar maple. (Here’s a link to my sugar maple for comparison.) First of all, sugar maples don’t have any flower blossoms right now (they will blossom around mid-April). Notice in the photograph above how the twigs are growing opposite each other on the branch. On a sugar maple, the twigs would not be opposite like that; they would alternate along the branch.

 

One of the reasons red maple trees are abundant is because they produce flowers so early in spring, before there’s much competition with other plants and before the trees have created leaves. Red maples are wind-pollinated trees. If the tree was covered with leaves at the same time as flowers, the leaves would get in the way of the movement of pollen. Newly awakening insects are attracted by the beautiful colors and sweet subtle scents, and for a time, nature is pretty much ALL ABOUT insuring the continued life of red maples.

 

Keep your eyes peeled for the coming storm of helicopter seeds in about 2 or 3 weeks. Birds and squirrels love to eat the seeds.

 

My red maple screens the neighbors windows from April to November, but there will be a lot of seeds scattered all over our yards.

 

That’s a leaf bud! 

By the way, I took notes on my walk. I spotted a total of 28 red maple trees in the one block around my house. How many can you identify today?

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