Warm temperatures have opened the flower buds of the red maple, one of the first trees to bloom when winter passes. One of the best moments of spring is when the trees are in bloom, and these renewed colors are the perfect antidote to the winter blues.
Maple trees bloom between April and June, although some may rarely bloom during the winter months. Maple trees bloom each year, and different species do so at different times. The samaras they develop are usually dropped within two weeks of their production.
In September, the leaves take on the same rich bright red as the spring female flowers. Distinctive red maple blooms begin to appear between late March and mid-April, depending on the weather. Maple trees bloom in late winter or early spring, with most species blooming shortly after or with leaves, but before some trees open.
The Flowering Habits of Common Maple Trees
Many maple varieties produce small flowers in the spring, although they make a significant contribution to the maple flower crop. While most red maples have only male or female flowers, some trees produce both, and the proportions vary widely from year to year.
To make things even less clear, some of the flowers on the red maple tree can carry both female and male parts. Some types of maple, such as the non-native Norwegian maple, are monoecious and have male and female parts on the same tree. Maples can only have female flowers; only male flowers; or both male and female flowers, meaning the tree is monoecious, notes the University of Tennessee Arboretum.
Maples produce flowers, although usually smaller ones that are not suitable for decorative purposes. If you look closely at red maples, you will see that many of them produce very beautiful little flowers, giving the bees their supportive pollen. For example, many honey bees feed on red maple flowers on sunny days from March to April.
The Growing Seasons for Maple Trees
Woody species can take two months to bloom, but unlike other maples, red maples tend to bloom individually, at different times throughout the spring. When the trees are already in bloom, like the red and silver maples, their fruits also develop early, which is an adaptation to the preferred habitat of these maples. Meanwhile, red and silver maples are distinguished by the haze of red to yellow flowers surrounding their bare branches.
In early spring, long before the trees begin to grow leaves, or even before the willows, you may notice a red haze between the branches of silver maple and between the branches of silver maple. In early spring, usually in March, long before the tree begins to grow leaves, the swollen red buds of the sugar maple (Acer saccharinum) begin to open, revealing the flowers inside.
The silver maple (Acer saccharinum), whose flowers are very similar to the red maple, is about to bloom, and even the boxwood (Acer negundo), also known as the grey maple, is in bloom, and the sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is about to bloom with a large flower.
Red Maple Trees and Their Natural Growth Metrics
The red maple can be easily distinguished from the colored sugar maple (A. saccharum) by its red branches, furthermore red maple has finely serrated leaf margins while sugar maple has smooth tips between the tips. The red maple’s common name most likely comes from the clusters of bright red flowers and red branches, and perhaps in part from its showy fall color that tends to dark scarlet, brown, and pink.
The reason red maples get their name is because the tree begins to take on a scarlet hue towards the end of winter when its red flower buds develop (yes maples have flowers) followed by red leaf stalks.
Not only does Somerset Red Maple look beautiful when it matures; in spring, this flower will make you think about how beautiful spring is when you stop. You start to see the red buds of the maple before anything else—or magnolia and cherry blossoms, two other favorite trees that emerge early—because it’s one of the species most sensitive to soil and light markings. The spring color of red maples is also due to young leaves, stems of leaves, twigs and winged fruits of trees, or samaras, which fly in the wind like tiny helicopters.
Additional Notes on the Red Maple
The trees have red flowers in dense racemes from late March to early April before the leaves appear; diptera pods, reddish stems and twigs and red buds all summer; and in autumn, excellent orange-red foliage. The fruits turn green in time, then brown, and become the typical dipterous seeds we associate with maples, twirling like a gyrocoptera when they fall from the trees by the thousands in late May or early June; but by now the leaves have hidden the branches and we have many more showy spring flowers to distract our attention.
What we’re seeing right now here in New England (among other flowering trees) are female red maples with clusters of drooping fertile flowers (as in my banner at the top of this post where you can see the Y-shaped stigmas protruding)and the male red maples now beginning to top their tops, stripped of their pollen, paler and hanging from the branches or even fallen to the ground like the autumn leaves of the male red maples of their Oni.
This spring, for some reason, Red Maple is now bringing me new opening flowers (male or female, or both). Because trees are among the first to bloom in spring, they are an early and much-needed source of pollen for bees and other insects. The striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), whose flowers hang in an elegant cascade, and the mountain maple (Acer spicatum), whose flowers stand upright, bloom later in the spring.