Shade Trees List

Acer campestre

Field maple, Hedge Maple. Not Native to Maine, relative to the Norway Maple.

• Low branching

• very dense

• oval to rounded crown

• Not bigger than 40ft usually

• Can be sheared into a hedge

• Ridged and furrowed bark - tight and shallow

• Opposite leaf arrangement

• Simple leaf - palmately lobed

• Obtuse apacies

• Winged fruit - 180 degree alignment - groovy mustache

• Terminal buds have some pubescence - sometimes white milky latex

• Golden yellow fall color

Acer ginnala

Amur Maple - INVASIVE!

Small tree, typically less than 30ft

• Usually multistem

• Very cold hardy

• Tolerant of Drought and compaction

• Prohibited from sale in maine

• Usually 4-6in bark

• Very distinctive leaf shape - trident

• Flowers late in spring - bees love it

• Nice bright pink/red fruit

Acer griseum

Paperback Maple - NOT NATIVE - native to China

• Very hard to grow from seed

• Expensive

• Specimen tree

• Can be 50-60ft tall in native landscape - usually not that tall in Maine

• Sometimes winter damage in 5b +6 zones

• Mostly low branching

• cinnamon orange bark

• Compound leaf - trifoliate + turnately compound

• Bright mossy leaf color

• Sharpened pencil terminal + accessory buds

• Fruit is like a horseshoe + pubescent

• Chartreuse + bright yellow green flowers

• Bright orange

• Tolerant of part shade

• Not good for wet compacted soils or dry

• Tolerates slight alkaline soils.

Acer negundo

Box Elder - Not native to Maine but to North-East

• Weedy

• Super Tough tree

• Compact soils

• Fast growing + weak wooded

• Asymmetrical habit

• Tall single stem

• 50-60ft tall

• Dioeceous - separate male+ female

• Irregular ridge + furrow bark

• “Ash leafed maple”

• Compound leaves like an ash tree

• Electric mint green on young stems

• Fruit - long racime

Acer palmatum

Japanese Maple

• Not reliably hardy in zone 4-5

• Standard form - 20ft or smaller

• Usually smooth gray bark - many green stemmed + red new growth cultivars

• Opposite leaf arrangement

• Horned buds

• palmately lobed

• Finely serrated

• Often red fruit - 180-120 degrees

• Usually not tolerant of extremes

• Lots of cultivars

Acer pensylvanicum

Striped Maple/Goose Foot Maple

• Shizocarps of samaras

• Yellow fall color

• Small slow growing understory tree

• One of the most shade tolerant species of maple

• Sequential hermaphrodite - change sex throughout lifetime

• Large shrub or small deciduous tree growing 16-33ft tall

• Trunk up to 8in in diameter

• Broadly columnar with short, forked trunk that divides into a flat-topped crown

• Blooms in late spring with yellowish-green bell-shaped inflorescences that hang in long, slender clusters.

• Young bark is smooth gray-green with prominent white vertical striping.

• Bark becomes brownish/gray with age - striped darken to a reddish-brown

• Broad and soft leaves - finely serrated edges and three shallow forward-pointing lobes.

• Turn bright yellow in the fall

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Acer platanoides

Norway Maple - INVASIVE

• Can displace sugar maple

• Hardy to zone 4

• Salt tolerant

• PROHIBITED FROM SALE IN MAINE

• Plump terminal buds

• Broad rounded leaves

• 180 Samara

• Yellow flower corm

• Yellow fall color

• Gray-brown bark and rounded crown

• Do not tend to develop shaggy bark

• Winter buds are shiny red-brown

• Leaves are opposite and palmately lobed with five lobes

Acer rubrum

Red Maple

• Native from Maine to Florida

• Lots of cultivars

• Young trees have smooth gray bark

• Vegetative buds are narrow

• 3-5 lobes on leaves

• Not always red fall colored

• Flower buds are clustered

• Poligamo dioecious - usually male or female, sometimes both

• Spring flowering

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Acer saccharinum

Silver Maple

• 70ft tall trees

• Hardy to zone 3

• Fast growing + weak wooded

• Great for open areas

• Native in Maine - Broad distribution

• Vertically fissured + peeling bark

• No petals on flowers

• Pubescence on bud scales

• Almost always yellow in the fall

• Simple + palmately veined leaves

• Deep angular notches between five lobes

• Long slender stalks of leaves - light breeze can produce striking effect as silver undersides are exposed

Acer saccharum

Sugar Maple

• Broad + rounded

• Shade tolerant

• Not tolerant of salt, compaction, drought

• Platey + fissured bark

• Conical buds + imbricate - scales overlapping

• Flower in early spring - fuzzy chartreuse flowers

• Lots of cultivars

Betula alleghaniensis

Yellow birch

• One of the tallest deciduous trees

• Not tolerant of poor conditions

• Native to the northeast

• Bark does not exfoliate - almost white gold

• Prominant lenticles on stem

• Serrate leaf margins

• Elliptical

• Fall color - beautiful golden yellow

Betula nigra

Black Birch/River Birch - Native to Eastern U.S.

• Few heat-tolerant birches in a family of mostly cold-weather trees

• 80-100ft

• 20-60in diameter

• Base of tree is often divided into multiple slender trunks

• Bark differs from youth to maturation.

• Young bark can have very papery salmon-pink to brown-gray tint - curling layers

• Mature bark is more reddish-brown with a dark gray base

• The scales on a mature tree lack the curling and become thick irregular plates.

• The twigs are thinly hairy

• Absence of terminal buds

• Lateral buds usually have a hook at the tip

• Alternate and Ovate leaves

• 3-6cm catkins

Betula papyrifera

Paper birch/American White Birch/Canoe Birch - Native to North America

• Thin white bark

• Peels in paper-like layers from the trunk

• One of the first species to colonize burned area within the northern latitudes

• 66ft tall

• 30in in diameter

• Usually single trunk - sometimes can develop multiple trunks close to the ground

• Typically short lived

• Stark white bark with fine horizontal strips

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Betula pendula

Silver birch - Not Native to U.S. - European White Birch

Also called “warty birch” from the warty twigs

• Medium sized deciduous tree

• White peeling bark on trunk

• Twigs are slender and pendulous

• Leaves are roundly triangular with double serrate margins

• Turn yellow and brown in Autumn

• 49-82ft tall

• Slender trunk (1ft-4in) diameter

• Golden brown bark at first then turns white as paper tissue feels off in flakes

• Bark remains smooth until the tree gets quite large

• Branches have whitish resin warts and twigs are slender, hairless and pendulous.

• Buds are small and sticky

• Leaves have short slender stalks (3-7cm)

• Triangular, broad, untoothed, wedge-shaped bases

Betula populifolia

Gray Birch - Native to Eastern North America

• Pioneer species

• 20-30ft

• Diameter 4-8 in

• Often multi-stem

• Crown is pyramidal with somewhat drooping branches

• Occasionally confused for quaking aspen

• DOES NOT EXFOLIATE as readily as paper birch

• Slender, wiry, hairless twigs with a dull gray or brown color.

• Warty or rough texture

• Buds are pointed, green-brown in color, shiny and have a gummy coating

• Lacks terminal buds

• Leaves 2.5-3in in length

• Alternate, simple, pinnately-veined - taper to elongated tip

• Dark green with doubly serrated margins.

Carpinus betulus

European/Common Hornbeam, Yoke Elm

• Deciduous small-medium size tree (49-82ft)

• Fluted and crooked trunk

• Smooth bark - greenish-grey (even in old trees)

• Buds are 10mm long as most and pressed close to the twig

• Alternate leaves (4-9cm), prominent veins with distincive corrugated texture + serrated margin

• Small fruit (7-8mm)

Carpinus caroliniana

American Hornbeam - Ironwood, Musclewood,

• Distinctive sinewy, muscle-like appearance of its trunk

• Native to eastern North America

• Occurs in shaded areas with moist soil, particularly

• Fluted and crooked trunk

• Bark is smooth and greenish-grey

• Leaves are alternate, 3-12cm long

Ostrya virginiana

American Hophornbeam - Native to North America

• Small deciduous understory tree - growing to 59ft tall and (8-20in diameter)

• Bark is brown to gray-brown

• Narrow shaggy plates flaking off

• Younger twigs and branches are smoother and gray with small elnticels

• Very young twigs are sparsely fuzzy to thick and hairy

• Leaves are ovoid-acute (2-5in)

• Pinnately veined, doubly serrated margin