Hello everyone, and welcome again to the Natural Resources Canada series on urban trees.
I'm Ken Farr. I'm a dendrologist with the Canadian Forest Service here at NRCan.
And today we're going to be talking about some of the urban trees that are common in
the area, and that would be useful as trees for planting on properties and in and around
spaces in your community.
In an earlier video on red maple, we mentioned that sugar maple was not a good choice for
urban forests, and that holds true.
But I think it was a little unfair and really missing out on a spectacular native tree if
we don't talk about sugar maple.
When we said not a good choice for an urban planting, really, that meant not along a street,
not as a boulevard tree, where the roots are going to be constricted and likely to be growing
in compacted soil and experiencing salt in winter, at least here in Eastern Canada.
For those reasons, these trees don't deal well with that level of stress.
But here we are in an urban park in the downtown area of the city, and this is a sugar maple,
acer saccharum, and it's doing just fine where it is.
The thing to keep in mind is there is lots of open space for the roots here.
There's a nice soil, lots of overhead space as well.
So if you're living in the suburbs, kind of a prairie urban area, or have an expansive
space in a downtown site, it's still a useful choice and a spectacular tree.
So identification wide.
The leaves, of course, are iconic as a Canadian symbol and spectacular in autumn, of course,
anywhere from yellow to red to purple to scarlet.
Keep in mind that sugar maple compared to Norway maple, which is a very common, exotic
and invasive tree species in urban areas.
Sugar maple, the whole shape of the leaf is square and not rectangular.
There's three main veins on the leaf itself, not five.
And about five lobes, sometimes three and not seven.
The other really strong characteristic for identifying sugar Maple, once it becomes mature
is this wonderful bark that, as you can see, forms nice, long vertical ridges.
But each of the ridges tends to curl away from the trunk of the tree on one side, and
that curling bark is extremely characteristic.
You're not going to see it with any of the other native maples, and a Norway maple does
not have that characteristic at all.
Beautiful, moderately fast-growing trees.
Long-lived in a natural forest — 300 to 400 years old is a good lifespan for a sugar maple.
Maybe slightly less in an urban setting, but a nice tree that you're going to have for
a long time once you've planted it.
Now keep in mind that it's a big tree, which makes it an excellent shade tree.
It means it can deliver all of those urban environmental services of shade, of shelter,
adding to green spaces.
But it's a big tree, so as much as 30 metres tall, maybe 20 metres wide.
Again, you have to make sure that you have a space where the tree is going to be able to develop and thrive.
So a sugar maple. It's the tree that we get maple syrup from.
It's a beautiful component of the Eastern Canadian broadleaf forest, and it does have
its place in the urban forest as well.
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