Regardless of what you call maple seeds, everyone is familiar with the characteristic twisted, curled, and winged seeds that fall from maple trees every year.
Maple trees drop their seeds during the period between late spring and early fall. Different maple trees release seeds during different spans within this timeframe. Silver maples release theirs first, and sugar maples are usually the last to do so. Seeds are dropped each year.
When dropped, the helicopter seeds can scatter and fly away a decent distance from the wind compared to other single-winged samaras. While other trees like ash and elm produce their own samaras, their seeds are just a wing.
The samara consists of a paper tissue wing attached to a nut that contains the seed. Two achenes, containing the actual seeds, are connected to the center of the paper fibrous tissue. The dense clusters of samara become more visible because the tiny leaves do not cover the seed.
How Samaras Are Formed and Distributed
The plant wraps the seed in a protective shell, in this case a pod, similar to what plants do with edible fruit, and the pod opens to release the seed. The fruit has two woody capsules, each containing a seed, which splits and explodes in the fall, spreading the seeds 30 feet away.
The pods ripen in the fall, turning from dark brown to black, and then the seeds mature, detach from their attachments and slap around the pods. When the maple pods mature, the tiny seeds fall off the branches and swirl on the ground, where they sprout and grow the following year. Like silver maples, they mature in late spring or early summer and are often blown away in fall.
As fun and majestic as watching their seeds fall, they can be a real headache and create a lot of garden work for homeowners. Sometimes when trees shed their fruits like walnuts, acorns or maple samara (birds) in large numbers, they can be dangerous, disgusting, or just plain unpleasant to harvest. Left unattended, maple root systems can damage concrete, and trees too close to buildings can peel off paint, siding, or shingles as they grow.
Tips on Surveying Maple Tree Growth
Leave shoots growing from the root system of untreated trees and trees, as most herbicides can damage the tree. However, do not prune if the unwanted shoot is growing from the root system of the desired tree.
If you find seedlings from past seasons that cannot be harvested, cut the stems as close to the ground as possible and check later in the season to see if the tree is trying to grow back. As noted, intensive planting should not cause long-term tree health problems, but homeowners should be prepared to rake, sweep, and pluck maple seedlings over the next few weeks.
One thing to watch out for is stress on the tree, as additional seed production may occur before the tree is about to die. In short, trees don’t grow as much in heavy-seeded years as they do in other years, and in many species, seed yield in one year can negatively affect seed yield in the next. Healthy maples sometimes miss a year’s seed formation due to poor pollination or an unusually good growing season the previous year.
Maples flood the environment with helicopter seeds with one to four years between harvests in much of Wisconsin. After periods during which maples are stressed, such as droughts or harsh winters, more pods or samaras may grow. Bountiful spring samaras alone can draw attention to the maple, especially when the seeds are ripe and turning brown.
Both trees have bright fall color, but there are some differences between the Sienese valley maple and the autumn fire maple. Red maple leaves are green on top and light greenish white on the underside, turning bright red in autumn.
Tips on Reviewing the Quality of Trees
Take field glasses (binoculars) with you so you can see the flowers are a nice dark red color with yellow stamens (sugar maple flowers are green). Now that you know more about the flying maple seeds, you will be even more fascinated by the hundreds of them you see circling the earth every year.
The seeds vary slightly in size and color between species, but they all produce winged seeds, affectionately called helicopters. Maple seeds are known for their two small “wings” which allow them to spiral down and float in the wind; for this they are also called whirlwinds or helicopters.
As with oaks, sugar maples show synchronous seed “trees” in which all trees in a population produce heavy seeds in certain years. An overabundance of samara sometimes means that the tree experienced some kind of “stress” in the previous year, so producing a bumper crop of seeds is how trees survive if that stress continues and that particular tree doesn’t survive. Some bird species that feed on certain fruits of the tree may completely disappear from an area if several consecutive years of low yields occur.
Fruiting in tree years is so high that a small population of predators cannot eat all the fruits, allowing some of them to germinate and become new trees.
He says he’s heard news of more maple seeds this year, but he’s also seen many trees, including his own, producing as much as usual. Maples are producing a huge amount of seeds this spring, and even experts at the Morton Arboretum in Laila aren’t 100 percent sure why. We have a maple tree in our backyard – only one, but you might think there are many more, judging by the insane number of helicopters that have crashed into our backyard this year.
This year’s incredible seed crop has had anyone within half a block of a maple tree grabbing a broom or leaf blower to deal with drifting seeds on sidewalks or other paved surfaces or clear gutters, downpipes and drains.