Plants

Mapple trees grow to be 30-130 feet high. However, there are some that stay shrubs and grow no taller then 10 meters with several smaller trunks growing at ground level. The root system of the maple is usually fibrous and dense and commonly grow root sprouts that can create clonal colonies.

You can pick out a maple tree from other tree species by their unique leaf pattern. Most maple tree leaves are lobed with 3-9 veins that each lead to a lobe. However there are other species that can differ in the way they look.

The flowers are regular and borne in racemes, corymbs, or umbels. They have four or five sepals, four or five petals about 1–6 mm long, four to ten stamens about 6-10 mm long, and two pistils or a pistil with two styles. The ovary is superior and has two carpels, whose wings elongate the flowers, making it easy to tell which flowers are female. Maples flower in late winter or early spring, in most species with or just after the leaves appear, but in some before them. The flowers are yellow, green, red, and orange and can be small.

Maples have distinctive fruits that are reffered to as samaras or “maple keys”. these seeds can occur in distinctive pairs that each contain one seed that are enclosed in a “nutlet” that are connected to a flattened wing of papery, fibrous tissue. They have been shaped to spin and also to carry the seeds a long distance on the wind.

The seed mature in only a few weeks to six months after flowering has occurred. The seeds disperse shortly after maturity. It is possible though for one tree to release hundreds of seeds at one time. Depending on the species, the seeds can be small and green to yellow and big with thicker seed pods. The green seeds are released in pairs, sometimes with the stems still connected. The yellow seeds are released individually and almost always without the stems.