Red or Silver?

Or what?

At my current cut I first thought all the maple on the log deck was of the red variety. After cutting some I then said silver. Bark was a little different as was the color of the wood. While taking a break yesterday I took a walk farther into the back yard (lot cleared for a new build) to check out the living trees and look at the leaves.
Here's a couple of the trees only 3-4' apart. One very smooth. The other rough looking like typical red maple. The leaves from both. The end cuts. (disregard the elm) Fresh cut. What type of maple is this? Does "wild grown" silver maple have a different leaf shape from the common yard trees I encounter?

 

The leaf is not right for silver maple, they are much deeper on the separation of sections. I think you might be looking at Freeman Maple, the leaf is very similar to red maple and it will have smooth bark from what I remember.

 

Concur. Silvers are extremely common here. I could go to the four corners of my County and pick leaves....they'd all look like this:

 

Ok, now that we have the tree mystree solved, what is up with the Barbie pink palms there buZZsaw BRAD?

 

Razor burn! I shaved them the night before!

 

I would say tree on left is sycamore maple, I am drawing a blank on the other one.

 

Left:


Right:

 

Neither are silver. Lobes are not cut in deep enough. Leaf on the right is a variety of Red...the red stem is the give away. Not sure on the left leaf.

 

That spalting in the wood is definitely red maple.

 

I figured you went to a psychic or a medium.... to have



Your palm read/red

 

That was my thought when I first saw it, but the lighter wood color in some of the rounds made me think otherwise. Does the spalting occur on Silver maple?

So I guess this answers the question that I've never scored "wild grown" silver maple. Very common yard tree around here that I'll only take when decent. Lots of time its twisty and big rounds that don't section up easily.

 

Looking at the leaves I didn't think either was silver. Having never seen one in the wild, my main question was the leaf shape on wild vs. "domesticated" yard grown ones.

 

I have seen some spalting in white but never like you have pictured. And here in south Jersey, I have never seen a silver maple tree growing in the woods. Only have seen them as yard trees.

 

Pretty much the same here other than those that have seeded themselves and grown on property lines. I guess the so called ones I've scored are red or some variety of soft maple.

 

Booo
Booo!

 

Welcome to maples Brad; here in Vermont the university has been cross breeding maples since 1791! Really leaves are only an indicator here; I have a maple with red maple leaves that I tapped to put bucket on (mostly for picture) and the sap was 7%. No soft maple ever had sugar content that high that’s a cross with a sugar maple somewhere

for reference soil types and age time of year and weather; all effects sugar content 2-3% is about average soft maple
4-5% sugar content average/high for sugar maple