How do I identify a maple tree in Minnesota?

The best way to identify maple trees is by their leaves, bark, and fruit. Maple trees commonly have leaves with pointed lobes and with deep indentations between the lobes. The leaves are dark green color. The bark on maple trees starts smooth and gray before developing fissures and furrows.

What maple trees are native to Minnesota?

Red maple is plentiful and common throughout its native range that includes Minnesota. It thrives across a wide variety of climatic conditions and soil types.

How many types of maple trees are there in Minnesota?

six species
Minnesota has six species of native maples, and some non-native species as well. You may be familiar with the lobed shape of a maple leaf, but on closer inspection each of these seven species’ leaves look a little different.

Are there maple trees in Minnesota?

Sugar maple (Acer saccharum), also known as rock maple or hard maple, is one of the best known trees in Minnesota. Long-lived and common to hardwood forests, its native range runs from Minnesota to Missouri, and east to Maine and Nova Scotia.

How do you tell if a tree is a maple tree?

Look where the branches meet on the branch. If they are alternate placement, like the beech branch on the left, below, you definitely do not have a maple tree. If, on the other hand, your branches meet in an opposite placement, like the maple branch on the right below, you very well may have identified a maple tree.

How do you tell a maple tree apart?

It is usually thin, smooth and gray on young trees, becoming thicker, darker and deeply furrowed into vertical, occasionally scaly ridges. Differences: The way to tell Red Maple and Sugar Maple apart is by the bark. The real difference is that the Red Maple has lighter and smoother bark then the Sugar Maple.

What’s the most common tree in Minnesota?

The quaking aspen
The quaking aspen has the distinction of being the most common tree in Minnesota (by volume)—it grows in vast quantities in northern Minnesota, but is well spread throughout the rest of the state.

How can you tell the difference between a sugar maple and a silver maple?

Silver and sugar maple are easy to tell apart by leaf, buds, and growth habit. There only slight overlap in habitat: silver maple usually grows closer to water and sugar maple on well-drained sites.

Where do maple trees grow in Minnesota?

Maple Forests Are Moving North Over 100 years ago, maple forest was spread out across central Minnesota with its center of density near Brainerd. By 2003, the center of maple density was closer to Grand Rapids — approximately 60 miles north.

How can you tell a red maple from a sugar maple?

The leaf margins tell the main story: sugar maples have smooth edges while red maples are toothed or serrated. The three lobes of a sugar maple’s leaf are separated by smooth, U-shaped valleys – think U as in sUgar. The red maple’s lobes, meanwhile, are separated by serrated, V-shaped valleys.