Despite Saturday’s gloomy sky, I headed out to Swatling Falls Nature Trails to continue my wildflower inventory there and also to see if I could find any assurances that spring is underway. Thankfully, I did!
There is sparse new growth to be found anywhere along the trails. But, on my way to view the falls, I came upon the first of a couple of reassurances that spring is indeed here. First, listen carefully (turn up the volume) while you watch my very short video, Songs of Spring.
Then, as I strolled along the East Woodland Trail, I came across numerous patches of –
Most blooms were mostly closed, but a few, like the one above, opened fully in anticipation of a passing pollinator. However, no other blooms were observed.
Hope you find more assurances that spring is here. If so, enjoy!
This week, I’m featuring Red Maple (Acer rubrum) as one of our local wildflowers that begins to bloom at this time.
Red Maple is one of the widest ranging deciduous tree species in forests along the entire east coast (Newfoundland to southern Florida). Its common name reflects the fact that its flowers, fruits, leaf stalks, and autumn colors are red or reddish.
Red Maple is considered a “soft maple” in the lumber industry, a designation it shares with Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum). This is more comparative, than descriptive, because, while still being a fairly hard wood, it is comparatively softer than its harder cousin, Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum).
Red Maple was used by various American Indian tribes to make spoons, arrow heads, baskets, and bowls. American Indians taught colonists how to make ink and dyes from this tree. Iron sulphate could be added to the tannin from Red Maple bark in order to make ink. Cinnamon-brown and black dyes were made from a bark extract as well as a blue dye by adding copper to that extract; a purple dye was made from rotten wood.
Identification Tips:
This tree is 50-80′ tall, forming a single trunk up to 3′ across and a crown that is pyramidal when young, becoming rounded to oval at maturity, with ascending to spreading branches. Trunk bark of older trees is gray, irregularly scaly, and rough-textured, while trunk bark of young trees is light gray and more smooth. The bark of branches and older twigs is whitish gray and smooth, while young twigs of the current year are reddish brown and covered with scattered white lenticels. Young leafy shoots are light green and smooth; they also have scattered white lenticels.
Three varieties of Red Maple are commonly recognized:
Variety rubrum has 5-lobed leaves that are smooth or hairy only along the midvein on the underside.
Variety drummondii, known as Drummond Maple, Drummond Red Maple, or Swamp Maple, has 3- to 5-lobed leaves that are hairy over their entire lower surface. It tends to prefer moist, swampy sites.
Variety trilobum, Trident Maple or Trident Red Maple, has similarly hairy but always 3-lobed leaves, the lower 2 lobes of which are somewhat compressed. Its leaves are more likely to turn yellow in the fall than those of the other varieties. It prefers drier sites than variety drummondii.
Emerging red tinged, pairs of opposite leaves occur along young twigs and shoots.
Emerging Red Maple leaves
Individual leaves are 2-5″ long and a little less across; each has 3 principal triangular lobes (sometimes 5 lobes with the two lower lobes being largely suppressed) with toothed margins and pointed tips. The base of each leaf is slightly heart-shaped to rounded. The upper surface of the leaves is yellowish green to medium green and smooth, while the lower surface is pale gray-green to white, smooth or nearly smooth. In some local ecotypes of this tree, the lower side of the leaves is slightly covered with a greyish, bluish, or whitish waxy coating or bloom that is easily rubbed off, while in others it is densely covered. The slender petioles are 2-3½” long and light green to red.
Red Maple is one of the first plants to flower in spring. Individual trees can develop all male flowers, all female flowers, or both male and female flowers on the same tree. Male flowers occur in dense stalkless clusters along last year’s twigs; they are surrounded by short scaly bracts whose margins are fringed with small hairs. Individual male flowers are about 1/8″ (3 mm.) long with 5 petals. The sepals and petals are usually red (less often yellow) and very similar in appearance.
Male flowers of Red Maple
The female flowers also occur in clusters along last year’s branches (usually on separate branches when male flowers are present on a tree). These clusters are initially stalkless, but the stalks (pedicels) of the flowers soon become ½-2″ long, resulting in a drooping appearance. Individual female flowers are about 1/8″ (3 mm.) long with 5 petals, and a 2-celled ovary with a pair of divergent styles. The sepals and petals are usually red (less often yellow) and very similar in appearance. Male flowers not as intense red as female flowers.
The female flowers are replaced by paired samaras that are arranged along the twigs in drooping clusters. Each pair of single dry fruits (samaras) forms a 45-90° angle. Each samara is ¾-1″ long, consisting of a single-seeded body and an elongated membranous wing; it is one of the smallest seeds of any of the maples. The samaras can be yellow, red, or reddish brown. They become mature during late spring or early summer and are distributed by the wind, resembling a helicopter as they fall to the ground. Red Maples begin producing seeds when only four years old.
About the middle of May, the red maples along the edges of swamps, their fruit being nearly ripe, are among the most beautiful objects in the landscape, especially if seen in a favorable light with respect to the sun. The keys are high colored, a sort of pink scarlet commonly, dangling at the end of peduncles three inches or more in length and only a little darker shade than themselves. The lit masses of these double samara, with their peduncles gracefully arching upward and outward a little before they curve downward in order to spread the fruit and give it room, are unequally disposed along the branches, where they tremble in the wind and are often tangled by it. Like the flower of the Shadbush, this handsome fruit is seen for the most part against bare twigs, it is so much in advance of its own and of other leaves.
This species is one of the early harbingers of autumn as it turns color well in advance of other eastern deciduous trees, especially when it is located in wet sites. Often, only a single branch turns color while all other leaves on the tree are still green. The deciduous leaves usually turn red during the autumn; less commonly, they become orange or yellow.
Red Maple autumn color
Folklore:
Maples are a symbol of strength and endurance.
The reason that maples turn red in the fall can be explained by Chasing the Bear, where an autumn bear hunt ends with the hunters piling up sumac and maple branches and butchering the bear upon the branches.
Culinary and Medicinal Uses:
American Indians used the sap to make sugar and syrup. The sap of Red Maple is equal in sweetness, flavor, and quality to that of Sugar Maple. However, the buds of Red Maple emerge much earlier in the spring than those of Sugar Maple, and after sprouting, the chemical makeup of the sap changes, imparting an undesirable flavor to the syrup. That being the case, Red Maple can only be tapped for syrup before the buds emerge, making the season for collecting its sap to be very short. Therefore, maple sap producers rarely tap these trees.
The Iroquois dried, pounded, and sifted the bark to make into bread.
American Indians used the plant for medicinal purposes. For instance, the Cherokee used an infusion for hives and muscular aches and boiled the inner bark with water as an eyewash. Others would brew tea from the inner bark to treat coughs and diarrhea.
American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis), Evening Grosbeak (Coccothraustes vespertinus), Purple Finch (Haemorhous purpureus), Red-Breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis), Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus), Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus), and Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) eat the seeds and buds, while the Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) drills holes into the bark to feed on sap. Woodpeckers and other insectivorous songbirds often search for the many insects that feed on Red Maples; these insects are especially important in feeding young nestlings. For instance, Red Maple stands are a preferred micro-habitat for foraging for Red-eyed Vireo (Vireo olivaceus).
Twigs and sometimes the leaves of Red Maple are browsed by White-Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), primarily during the winter when other foods are scarce. Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus) sometimes eats the seedlings, while Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Red Squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris), and Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) occasionally eat the seeds.
“…I saw a red squirrel steal slyly up a red maple, as if he were in search of a bird’s nest (though it is early for most)… he crept far out on the slender branches and, reaching out his neck, nibbled off and … voraciously devoured the half-grown keys, using his paws to direct them into his mouth… Bunch after bunch, he plucked and ate … the whole tree hanging red … all glowing and transparent by the sun.”
The cavities of older trees are used as nesting habitat by Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio), Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor), and Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), and as well as tree squirrels. Such cavities are also used by various tree-roosting bats.
If you will be visiting some of our local nature preserves, parks, and trails, I hope you will consider downloading my wildflower field guides for those destinations. I have recently compiled a new wildflower field guide for Dwaas Kill Nature Preserve and updated/expanded two others (Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve and Zim Smith Trail); you can view or download them here. I hope they help you learn about wildflowers that you may encounter during your visits.
Red Maple (Acer rubrum) – typically begins blooming in MarchBeaked Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) – typically begins blooming in latter half of March.Emerging leaves of False Hellebore (Veratrum viride)Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)
Consider these activities as part of your adventures this spring –
The name shamrock comes from Irish seamróg ([ˈʃamˠɾˠoːɡ]), which is the diminutive of the Irish word seamair óg and simply means “young clover.”
However, since about 1600, there has not been a consensus over which species of clover is the “true” shamrock. And, some have contended that a shamrock is not a clover at all!
According to Wikipedia, detailed investigations to settle this matter were carried out in two separate botanical surveys in Ireland, one in 1893 and the other in 1988. The 1893 survey was carried out by Nathaniel Colgan, an amateur naturalist working as a clerk in Dublin, and the 1988 survey was carried out by E. Charles Nelson, Director of the Irish National Botanic Gardens.
Both surveys involved asking people from all across Ireland to send in examples of shamrock, which were then planted and allowed to flower, so that the submitted species could be identified. The results of both surveys were very similar, showing that the conception of the shamrock in Ireland had changed little over that century. Those results are summarized below; click on the table for better viewing.
The results show that there is no one “true” species of shamrock, but that Lesser Clover (Trifolium dubium) is considered to be the shamrock by roughly half of Irish people. It is important to note that none of the species listed in the survey grow only in Ireland and all are common throughout Europe. In fact, nearly all have become naturalized here locally and most of those are commonly found at the destinations listed below.
Given the trajectory of trending news that the COVID-19 global pandemic will eventually become an endemic disease, I am optimistically planning to once again offer in-person wildflower walks during 2022. We’ll all need to heed COVID-19 health and safety protocols, as may be applicable, during each scheduled walk.
This year, I will be conducting a series of wildflower walks emphasizing the photogenic beauty of our blooming wildflowers. Each of eight walks will feature a particular species, but all walks will offer a variety of blooming wildflowers to enjoy. I hope that nature photographers as well as wildflower enthusiasts will join me on these outings as each walk will be relatively short in distance to allow ample time for all to capture images of each of the blooming species we encounter.
This series of wildflower walks will begin on April 30 at a 41-acre property along the Mohawk River owned by the Town of Clifton Park to observe Carolina Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana) and other spring ephemeral wildflowers and then continue into late summer, concluding on August 18 at the Dwaas Kill Nature Preserve to view Great Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). Each walk will offer plenty of up-close photo ops of the featured species as well as the others we encounter.
However, the first scheduled walk will actually occur on Saturday, April 30; it will be a foraging hike at Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve in search of Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) fiddleheads. That walk will be preceded by an online presentation on April 26 regarding Foraging for Wild Edibles: Fern Fiddleheads.
For more information about all of my scheduled events, please view the Events page.
Curious By Nature 