Need help identifying maple leaves

[SGSyrup]

Hi folks! I need some help here. OK... I know that the first one is a striped maple and the top right is a sugar. Can anyone tell me authoritatively what the bottom two are? Previously, I would have said they are both reds, but that was before I compared them side by side and realized how different they were.
We had an incredible storm in our area the other night that knocked a bunch of leaves off the trees, so I was taking advantage of the easy access.
Thanks!

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/3540/aprmay09.th.jpg (http://img504.imageshack.us/my.php?image=aprmay09.jpg)

(Maybe I should have put this thread in the Sugar Inn.)

[peacemaker]

it looks like to me left is a box elder and the right is a black or silver

[chrisnjake9]

looks like mountain maple or norway hard to see by pic

[SGSyrup]

What the pics don't show is that both of them have fine teeth. That bit of info might help.

[maple flats]

Can't see well enough to id but I don't see a box elder, also knows as canadian maple and ash leaf maple. Go to a tree ID resource. Google dendrology online, then trees, hardwoods.

[Russell Lampron]

The one on the top right is sugar a maple. I think that the one on the lower right is a red maple. If I could see the "V" between the lobes better I would know for sure. If it comes to a sharp point there it is a red.

[KenWP]

Bottom left is a black maple bottom right a red maple.

[cncaboose]

bottom left is not black maple. That has leaves almost indistinguishable from sugars as do the Norways. It looks most like a red variation, though it could be one of the imported planetree maples. Definitely not a boxelder, which has compound leaves like the ashes.

[KenWP]

Here is the web site that shows black maple leaves don't look like maple leaves.

http://www.massmaple.org/treeID.html

[Dennis H.]

Around here all we have is Red's and some of the trees have 5 lobes and some only have 3 lobes but they all have teeth or serrations.

Now I never saw a box elder so I can't say that it isn't one of those.

The lobes are not deep enough to be silvers, none that I ever saw anyway.

What I found is that when it comes to mother nature everything doesn't always fit exactly.

[KenWP]

Here is a picture of Box Elder leaves. The bark is the dead giveaway even before you see the leaves.

http://www.cnr.vt.edu/DENDRO/DENDROLOGY/syllabus/factsheet.cfm?ID=3

I have all the trees here Reds.Black and Sugars plus the Silvers and Box Elder's. The Blacks hold their buds longer then the Reds do and since they are all mixed toghether I end up haveing trees beside each other that are tapped and not tapped.

[hardermaple]

Bottom left is a Mountain leaf maple, top left is a striped maple, bottom right is a red maple, top right is a sugar maple. I think.

[SGSyrup]

Thanks for all the input.


If I could see the "V" between the lobes better I would know for sure. If it comes to a sharp point there it is a red.

Russell,
I already threw away the leaves, but I zoomed in on the original pic on my computer, and I couldn't tell for sure, either, whether it is a sharp point or not.
Maybe I'll find another leaf.


Around here all we have is Red's and some of the trees have 5 lobes and some only have 3 lobes but they all have teeth or serrations.
What I found is that when it comes to mother nature everything doesn't always fit exactly.

Dennis,
I think you may have hit on it. I wonder if they are both reds after all...

Harder,
I wondered, too, if the bottom left wasn't a mountain maple, if not a red.

[mcsap]

Maybe I'm getting my left and right messed up, but I think folks have it figured out. The one under the sugar maple leaf could be a mountain maple, I do think you have that in the higher elevations of sw VA. And the other one under the striped maple is a red maple. But I agree, you sometimes get reds with 5 lobes.

[peacemaker]

the pic of the box elder is the early leaves as the mature each leaf on the cluster looks more like the mountain or stiped around here they call them muck maple are scrub maple

[Dennis H.]

Here is a pic of two different Red Maple leaves. I just picked them this evening and yes they are from a Red Maple.

The one on the left has 5 lobes and the one on the right has 3 lobes.

[KenWP]

I have another guestion. I have trees that are a foot wide and they have green bark on their trunks. I figured they are young black maples as they have buds like a sugar maple but leaves like a black maple.

[Dennis H.]

Ken is there white strips in the green bark?

I have a few stripped Maples here and they don't get very big.
The bark on them are green with whites strips. The leaves on tem tend to be larger than reds and only have 3 lobes.

For what I understand is that they won't get large enough to tap if you even wanted to tap them. I pulled most of them out of the ground, just taking up sace where other trees can grow.

[KenWP]

No they are way to big for striped maples. I have those and the biggest is maybe as big as a baseball bat. These are big trees just have green bark. I have one that gave me 5 gallons of sap a day when I first tapped it. They are real smooth also.

[Squaredeal]

I learned early in my college dendrology class that there is wide variation in the appearance of trees (as with humans). My professor had ever weird specimen in the county on our tests. Since the class was given in the fall semester leaves were soon on the ground and bark, branching, buds and overall appearance became the best (and only clues).
Just be glad that you are not trying to ID oaks.

[C.Wilcox]

Ken,

Can you take pictures of the leaves, a twig, and the bark? Would help with identification.

BTW- not to hijack this thread, but how did your box elder syrup experiment turn out?

Corey

[KenWP]

Box Elder syrup turned out very well. I was able to collect about 140 gallons of the sap over three batchs and made the lightest syrup of all the syrup I made. When I boil it the niter comes out a yucky white instead of brown like the sugar maples. I even made some of it into sugar and it came out a not bad yellow color. The highest the sugar content of the sap went was 1.7% so I had to boil a bit more to get a gallon of sap.

[C.Wilcox]

Yeah, yucky white nitre sounds about right. Sometimes it looks like somebody dumped instant mashed potatoes in the bottom of the pan. Mix in a few wood ashes and you get a really unappetizing looking mess. Interesting to hear that your syrup turned out light in color. I've found that I get lighter syrup by keeping the temps lower and increasing the depth of sap in the pan. Last year I boiled in an emanel pot (for waterbath canning) and my syrup was all a nice amber color. This year I boiled in a series of catering pans with a really hot fire and my syrup is all really dark.