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New York Champion Silver Maple Acer saccharinum Maple Family — Maple Genus Schoharie, New York Circumference = 274 inches (22.8 feet) Height = 105 feet Average Crown Spread = 81 feet Total Points = 399 Nominated: 2000 by: Fred Breglia

The Silver Maple, with graceful, silvery, deeply cut leaves, is also called White Maple, Soft Maple and River Maple, is one of America's best known trees, due to its wide natural range and general use for shade and ornamental planting. Formerly, in the early 1900s, this attractive tree was planted extensively for ornamental purposes, but is now rarely planted because it's short-lived, has many pests, and suffers damage from wind, snow and ice, which cause its brittle wood to split. Also, its abundant fruit produces litter.

Silver Maple occurs in a wide range, from New Brunswick to Florida, west to Oklahoma and Nebraska. The largest specimens usually grow in wet, poorly drained, mucky or peaty soils of floodplains, streams, river bottoms, and along ponds and lakes. It grows in association with many other trees, including American elm, red maple, basswood, river birch, swamp white oak, and slippery elm.

Like most maples, Silver Maple growth is rapid the first 25 to 30 years, with trees reaching full size at 90 to 110 years. Silver Maple seldom lives more than 125 to 140 years. The tree can stand short periods of flooding, but is very susceptible to fire.

Flowering is in late winter or early spring before leaves expand. Fruits ripen in April or May. Large seed crops are produced every year, with winged seed that are the largest produced by any native maple. Rodents, fox, gray and red squirrels, and birds, especially pine and evening grosbeaks, feed on seeds. Whitetail deer browse the young twigs and foliage. Larger branches and trunk, hollowed by heart-rot, provide excellent dens for squirrels and raccoons.

The pale-brown wood is hard, strong, but brittle, and is inferior to sugar or red maple. It is sometimes used for inexpensive furniture, and for crates and veneer. Sugar can be obtained from the sweetish sap, but the yield is low.

Identification

Size: grows rapidly, medium to tall tree, 50 to 80 feet high, may reach 90 feet, rarely taller, with few large forks in large, spreading, open, round-topped crown of curving branches; trunk short, thick, straight, up to 3 foot diameter

Range: New Brunswick and southern Ontario south to Florida, and west to the Dakotas and Oklahoma, north to northern Minnesota, up to 2000 foot elevations

Habitat: Moist to wet soils of stream banks and floodplains, borders of lakes, ponds and swamps, with other hardwoods

Leaves: simple, opposite, deciduous, papery, broadly ovate, bright green and smooth above, paler silvery-white beneath, 5.5 to 8 inches long, 4 to 7 inches wide, deeply 5-lobed with narrow sinuses, margins irregularly double toothed, pointed at tips, square to heart-shaped at base, divided by deep clefts with rounded bases, turning pale yellow in autumn

Leafstalks: slender, 3 to 4 inches long, often reddish

Flowers: reddish to crimson, turning greenish-yellow, in compact, nearly stalkless clusters along twigs in late winter or early spring before leaves appear, male and female in separate clusters

Fruit: typical two-winged maple key, 1.5 to 3 inches long, .4 to .8 inch wide, widespreading at about 90 degrees, prominently veined, on slender stalks

Bark: on branches and young stems is smooth and gray. On old trunks, thin (.8 inch), gray to grayish-brown, separates in shallow furrows and large, flat, thin scales, sometimes free at ends, into scaly, shaggy ridges

Twigs: slender, glossy, light green to reddish-brown, marked with many light dots, often slightly drooping, with disagreeable odor if broken

Branches: stout, spreading to nearly upright, branchlets slender, sometimes hanging, brittle, green turning bright reddish-brown with age

Buds: rounded (or nearly so at tip), red to reddish-brown, .2 to .3 inch long, broadest near middle or base, covered with 6 to 8 visible scales, clustered in groups along twigs

Wood: moderately hard, strong, rather brittle, close-grained, light brown with white sapwood, used in paper manufacture, berry baskets, boxboards, and small household articles

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