Thread: What are these two Maples?

Leaves:

Oops, sorry about the large image. Here's the bark of the two respective two trees:




http://www.chuckdaniels.com/index/Page1.html

Sugar Maple on Left, Norway Maple on Right. Norway leaf is usually a little wider that it is tall, Norway is usually shiny on both top and bottom. 'Seems to fit this picture and the tree bark also.

Bob Underwood

Sugar on the left and probably black on the right.  Or both sugar.

Nice, Glen, you got it. Sugar and Black Maple. Ain't often you get to beat out the professor. Looks like reputation points for you!

The hairy petioles give it away:


http://www.chuckdaniels.com/index/Page1.html

Originally Posted by glens

Sugar on the left and probably black on the right. 

Good call.

Yeah, well not as good as the call I made last weekend!  You better follow up on that.  I kicked myself all the way home for not going back in and setting you up after you left...

Chuck, Okay if I include these images in my collection I use for class? That is what I like about this site. It gives me a chance to keep up on things I do not see too often in ND. I like these trivia type deals. It keeps us thinking!!!

Bob

Bob, you know the answer to that, Yes!

The Sugar Maple/Black Maple distinction has fascinated me for a couple years now. I never really noticed the difference between them until a professor (Donald Leopold, ESF, Syracuse) pointed out to me the difference between them both anatomically and ecologically. Now, when in the woods I always look for Black Maples to see if the ecological distinction attributed to them generally holds true -- and from my own observations, generally I think it does. The Black Maple is generally more tolerant of poorer, less silty soils than the Sugar Maple, I think. But to complicate things, it appears that they readily cross-breed with Sugars, so it's often difficult to "peg" a Black Maple as true.

Some taxonomists/botanists like to class the Black Maple as a subspecies of the Sugar Maple, but my own personsal bias is it's a species of its own, despite its proclivity to hybridize. Its ecological niche in poorer, wetter soils is indeed different from the Sugar Maple.