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Jim Elbrecht

(Gary Heston) wrote:

In article ,
Jim Elbrecht wrote:
On Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:01:20 -0400, "Marty B." wrote:
-snip-
Silver maple is a garbage tree. The wood is soft because they grow so
fast. Surely you've noticed how they break during wind, and how fast those
things grow. Why you would want to save the thing is beyond comprehension.

Not the OP-- but here's why I want *my* silver maple. It is 150
years old & has more character than I can afford to buy. It also
shades the back of my house and my patio.

It is messy-- it drops limbs, seeds, buds, and leaves during the year.

But it also provides a few gallons of sweet maple syrup when the
spirit moves me to tap it.

That's a sugar maple. Leaves shaped like the one on the Canadian flag,
with dark grey-brown bark and well-behaved roots (they stay underground).

No. no. no, and definitely don't.

Silver maples have white bark, leaves are pointed ovals, dark green on
top and silver-white on the bottom, with roots that break the surface
every 2-3 feet.

Also known as swamp, river, white, soft, or water maple. The Latin
taxonomy is Acer saccharinum. An argument has been made that
Linnaeus meant for the Silver Maple to be a sugar maple-- it was a
century later that someone named the Eastern US 'sugar' maple.
("The Sugar Maples" by Benjamin Franklin Bush, American Midland
Naturalist, Vol. 12, No. 11 (Sep., 1931), pp. 499-503)

See my other post for my own experience with both species on my
property.

Sugar maples are good trees; silver maples are not.

There are no bad trees-- just trees that don't please us sometimes.g
I am willing to put up with my Silver's foibles in exchange for its
benefits.

Jim