Red Maples and Sugar Maples

     At the time of this writing, October 21, 2015, red maples and sugar maples are at their peak of spectacular beauty in Pennsylvania.  Red maple leaves have turned red and the foliage on sugar maples is orange, brightening many woods and suburban areas here and elsewhere in North America.  The leaves of both these related species of trees started turning colors in September when the amount of daylight each succeeding day continued to get shorter than the day before and average temperatures lowered.  Those natural happenings cause trees to shut off water to their leaves, which causes the death of them and the green chlorophyll in them.  When the green fades, the other colors, that were always there, are obvious to us.
     Both these handsome species are common in their natural ranges.  Red maples are endemic to the eastern half of the united States from southern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.  Sugar maples' range is the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.  But today many trees of both species are planted on lawns because of the beauties of their striking autumn foliage and their elegant shapes when bare in winter. 
     Individuals of both species can become massive with magnificent trunks and limbs.  The bark of red maples, particularly younger ones, tends to be fairly smooth, while sugar maple bark is rough and tends to flare out in many places.  Wild red maples mostly inhabit bottom lands with moist soil, while sugar maples are most common in upland woods.
     Red maples are well-named because there is something red on them in every season through the year.  They have red seeds early in summer, red foliage in fall, red buds in winter and multitudes of red flowers early in April, which makes the whole canopy of bottom land woods red.  I like to hear male spring peepers shrilly peeping and the melodious trilling of male American toads in swamps during warm April evenings under a ceiling of red maple blossoms.       
     Red maples and sugar maples have winged seeds that grow in pairs.  Each seed has a thick part that houses the embryo and its stored food, and a thin wing.  Because of its wing, each seed can twirl on the wind away from the parent tree and hopefully land and sprout in a place away from the shade of other trees.  
     Older trees of both types of maples are riddled with cavities where wind ripped branches off the trees.  Without the protective bark, the wood in the wounds decays, creating hollows that squirrels, raccoons, certain kinds of small birds, certain hawks and owls and other critters can live in and raise young.
     And the clear sap of both these kinds of maples can be made into syrup and sugar.  Sugar maples have two percent of sugar in their watery sap while red maples and other types of maples have less than one percent.  Obviously, sugar maples are the best species to get maple syrup. 
     Look for the striking beauties of foliage on red and sugar maples at this time of year.  They are enjoyable and inspiring.