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National Co-Champion Rocky Mountain Maple Acer glabrum Maple Family — Maple Genus Sandpoint, Idaho Circumference = 53 inches Height = 80 feet Average Crown Spread = 32 feet Total Points = 141 Nominated: 1989 by: Dennis Clark & Millard Evenson Cloned: August 2001 by: Martin Flanagan

The Rocky Mountain Maple is a small tree widely scattered throughout the western U.S. and Pacific Northwest. Its range extends from south Alaska to the Sonoran Desert in New Mexico. It grows on wet sites, usually at 4,000 to 6,000 feet elevations, but reaches 9,000 feet in its southern range. It grows in sheltered canyons, ravines, along streams, and moist slopes. Several species grow in association, including pinyon pine, yellow pine and spruce.

The leaves vary from one part of its range to another. The Douglas maple(Acer glabrum variety douglasii) occurs in the northern part of the range, and differs by having 3 to 5 shallow lobed leaves, and fruit with a narrower angle of spread between the wings.

The greenish-yellow flowers are produced in May (Arizona, New Mexico) to July (Alaska, Canada), and the winged fruits mature in August or September. The seeds are eaten by rodents and birds. Whitetail and mule deer browse the twigs and leaves/ The light-brown wood is hard and heavy, but not commercially important because the trees are too small. It is excellent for campfires and woodstoves.

Identification

Size: shrub or small tree up to 30 fet high, with irregular, often rounded crown; trunk short, branching close to the ground, up to 10 inch diameter

Range: southern Alaska south through British Columbia into coastal Washington and Oregon and northwest California, also Idaho and western Montana, and south at higher elevations into New Mexico and Arizona

Habitat: moist, well-drained soils in canyons, ravines, and along streams

Leaves: simple, opposite, deciduous, papery, shiny dark green above, paler and smooth beneath, almost round in outline, 3- to 5-lobed (rarely with 3 leaflets), 3 to 5.5 inches long, pointed at tips, round to heart-shaped at base, sharply double toothed along margins

Leafstalks: stout, 1 to 4.5 inches long

Flowers: yellowish-green, male and female normally on separate trees, in slendr, hanging, branched, few-flowered clusters at ends of branchlets, each flower with tubular, 5-lobed calyx, petals usually 5, 6 to 8 stamens in male flowers, single pistil in female

Fruit: 2-winged, dry at maturity, .8 to 1 inch long, with small angle of spread between wings (less than 45 degrees)

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Related Species: Texas Live Oak, Coast Live Oak, Sand Live Oak

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TERRA: The Earth Restoration and Reforestation Alliance — www.championtrees.org — updated 8/14/2003