Red Maples in Graham Creek Nature Preserve
A walk through Graham Creek Nature Preserve, you will see Acer rubrum L., aka red maples. You can find red maples throughout eastern North America. That means they have quite a big range. A “range” means the area where you can typically find a particular species. If you look in a field guide about any animal or plant, one of the things that guide will tell you is the range.
Red maples usually grow to about 50 feet high, and may become 100 feet high with a trunk diameter of 4 feet. Like most trees, they change a lot as they age. They have smooth gray bark as youngsters, but old trees have bark that is very dark gray, l/4-1/2 inch thick, shaggy, and roughened into long ridges that peel off in long plates. Maple leaves are very easy to identify because they are so coarsely toothed and sharply cut, with lobes more or less sharply pointed. They turn bright red in fall, especially in colder areas north of here.
Other names - swamp maple, soft maple, water maple, white maple.
Helicopter Seeds: Maple seeds have wings about an inch long. You can see maple seeds spinning to earth like little helicopters in late summer and early fall.
Watch for little seedling red maples as you hike. They’re easy to spot because of these very special leaves. Here's a video loop of a red maple:
