The Red Maple tree (Acer rubrum)

Today we'll talk about the red maple tree, which many people think of as "Canada's tree."  After all, a red-coloured generic maple leaf is featured on Canada's national flag.  The Latin name for the red maple is the Acer rubrum.  Some people also refer to this species as the water maple, the swamp maple, or the soft maple.

Red maple gets its name due to the brilliant red colour of the leaves before they drop in the fall.  Here's a photo of a red maple, which stands out brilliantly in the early fall when surrounded by other species with leaves that stay green.

Even though many Canadians think of the red maple as "our" tree, it only grows throughout parts of Canada.  Its range in the US is much larger!  In Canada, red maple can be found very commonly throughout southern Ontario, southern Quebec, and the Maritime provinces.  However, in the US, the range extends through all of the northeastern and southeastern parts of the country, right down to the southern tip of Florida and west into Texas.  That's great, because if global warming raises our average temperatures in Canada in the next few decades, the red maple (and many other hardwoods) will thrive.  Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

This species can grow to be a fairly large tree.  It is common for mature trees to be as much as thirty meters in height (100 feet) and to have a diameter at breast height that is a full meter thick (three feet).  Of course, a tree grown in the open can have an even thicker trunk than one grown in a forest, which is the case with most species.

Red maple has a fairly thin bark.  It is easy for this bark to become damaged by animals or other reasons, in which case fungi may be able to get into the tree, eventually leading to heart rot of the core of the tree.  Although this maple can grow to be fairly large, it is not an extremely long lasting tree like many conifers.  A mature red maple will often live for more than a century when left alone, but this is still not as long as species such as red spruce or eastern white pine.

Red maple has an ability to thrive in many types of ecosystems.  It's a pioneer species, coming in rapidly after a forest has been disturbed.  Thanks to its versatility, it can grow in direct sunlight or shade, in elevations from sea level to almost a thousand meters (3000 feet), in a wide pH range for soil acidity, and in everything from dry ground to poorly drained swamps.  In fact, its ability to thrive in swampy areas is why it is often referred to as water maple or swamp maple.

As a forest matures, it is common for the red maples to eventually die out and be replaced by shade-tolerant succession species.  However, due to widespread die-off of American elms and American chestnuts during the last couple of centuries, red maple is slowly becoming a more important component of mature forests throughout the eastern United States.

The leaves of the red maple are a very distinct feature of the species, as we've already mentioned.  Here's a photo of some leaves before they start to turn colour in the fall:

And of course, you can compare their shape as being somewhat similar to that of the Canadian flag:

 

I should note that the maple leaf on the Canadian flag is NOT actually the red maple.  It's a generic or stylized maple design, sort of a blend between red and sugar and a few other maples.  There are about ten types of maple trees in Canada.

Red maple leaves have a very distinct shape.  They also have slightly serrated edges, which helps distinguish them from the leaves of other maples.  In the fall, as they are getting ready to die and fall from the tree, they lose their green colour and turn yellow/orange and sometimes to a bright red.  Trees with male flowers are more likely to turn a brilliant red than trees with female flowers.  Also, trees in colder areas (further north, higher elevation) are also more likely to be be a bright red instead of a more subdued orange.

One drawback with red maples:  If you have horses, don't plant red maples in their paddocks or pastures.  The leaves are toxic to horses.

Here are a few fun facts about red maple trees:

1.  The red maple is the state tree of Rhode Island.  Rhode Islanders love their reds, it seems.  Their state bird is the red hen, and even the name Rhode Island comes from a Dutch reference to "reddish."  That could refer to the reddish clay, or it may refer to the reddish colour of the maples.

2.  Wood ducks often like to nest inside the cavities of swamp maples.

3.  Red maples grow quite quickly, and can start producing seed when they are just four or five years old.

4.  Red maple seeds are called samara, which is a seed type that means "dried fruit with wing."  The seeds grow on the tree in pairs.  As they fall, they separate and rotate slowly to the ground.  This means that the wind is able to carry the seeds a fair distance away from the tree, to help propagate the species more widely.  These seeds are fairly large (about an inch long) and are quite easy to spot.  Here's a photo of a connected pair:

At Replant.ca Environmental, we sometimes plant red maple seedlings.  There's no need to plant them in harvested or damaged areas that held red maple previously, because they regenerate quite well naturally.  However, it can be helpful to plant this type of tree as part of a broader species mix in some afforestation projects where natural regen is unlikely, such as when turning unused pastureland back to forest.  Here's a photo of some of the red maple seedlings that we were planting on several of our projects this past fall:

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be. 

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest! 

 

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The Red Oak tree (Quercus rubra)

In today's post, I'm going to talk about the red oak, or more specifically the northern red oak.  There is also a southern red oak, which is commonly known as Spanish oak.  However, we're focusing on Quercus rubra, which is sometimes referred to as Champion Oak.  We certainly think that it's a champ.  Northern red oak is one of more than six hundred different oak species found around the world.

Red oak is more widely distributed throughout the central-eastern and northeastern US than it is in Canada, although it can be found quite easily throughout eastern Canada, southern Quebec, and southern Ontario.  Incidentally, the red oak is the provincial tree of Prince Edward Island!  It is also the state tree of New Jersey.  Here's a range map for Quercus rubra, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The red oak is a deciduous (broadleaf) hardwood species.  It has a very dense wood.  In fact, it is denser than ash, chestnut, birch, mahogany, and walnut!  While this makes it a desirable species for firewood, it's also the most commonly used hardwood in North America for woodworking and similar uses.  You can find red oak in flooring, cabinets, pallets, coffins, railway ties, plywood, wine barrels, and many other applications.

"Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow."  You've probably heard that phrase before.  It first appeared in print in 1841 in a book called, "The Philosophical Emperor, A Political Experiment." (A.B. Johnson).  But how large do they really grow?  Well, that depends on the company that they keep.  In a forest, a mature oak will often grow to 30 meters in height (almost 100 feet), with a trunk diameter at breast height of up to one meter (three feet).  However, some oak trees grow out in the open, whether it is by chance (in nature) or by design (planted).  Oak trees that grow in the open adapt to the higher impact of winds.  These individual trees will develop deeper roots than red oak in forests, and don't put on as much height.  Finally, they'll often develop much thicker trunks to keep themselves from blowing over, sometimes approaching 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter!

The seeds of the oak tree have a unique name, acorns.  I tried to find out where that word came from.  I found different suggestions.  Some sources say that the name comes from the word "akran" in the Gothic language (an east Germanic language).  Other sources say that the name comes from the word "aecern," which means berry or fruit in Old English.  Perhaps it came from both languages, as some languages borrowed from each other thanks to the influence of travelers.

Acorns are very healthy to eat, although consumption by modern humans is uncommon.  However, within the animal kingdom, acorns are a staple to many squirrels, mice, and other rodents.  They're consumed in large quantities by bears, wild pigs, and deer.  Many birds will eat them, especially jays, ducks, and woodpeckers.  Acorns are rich in proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.  Unfortunately, the tannins found in acorns make them taste quite bitter to humans, which is why they aren't a popular food for us.  Red oak acorns are especially bitter compared to acorns from other oak species, so it probably isn't worth your while to go foraging.  If you do decide to try them for a snack, do some extensive research first.  They should never be eaten raw.  To cook them, you'll first have to learn to blanch out the tannins, which can be quite unhealthy.  Also, a significant percentage of people are allergic to tree nuts, so eating acorns could be quite dangerous and lead to anaphylactic shock.  Proceed with great caution!  Acorns (and oak leaves) are also very unhealthy for horses.

Here is a photo of some acorns that we picked a few weeks ago:

Acorns are pretty.  And quite recognizable.  The leaves of the oak are also very recognizable, thanks to the large serrations on their edges.  Here's a photo:

Oak leaves are different than the leaves of most other deciduous species, because some of them typically cling to the tree long after leaves of most other hardwoods have dropped.  Nobody is entirely certain why this happens, but not too many species exhibit this behaviour.  Trees that keep many of their old leaves through the winter are called marcescent species.

As far as deciduous trees grow, northern red oak grows fairly quickly.  Even in the northern extent of its range (in Canada), the tree can grow to be as much as 5m high (16 feet) in just ten years.  Red oak trees can have a very long life span.  If they aren't disturbed by humans, insects, or wildfire, these trees can often live to be more than 300 years old.

Here are some fun facts about red oak trees:

- Acorns take two years to mature before they fall from the tree.  This isn't the case with all species of oaks, but it applies to red oak.  Also, some individual oak trees will produce hundreds of thousands of acorns in their lifetime!

- These trees are easy to grow, once you find acorns.  The general method is to pick the acorns in the fall, keep them chilled (but not frozen) over winter, then to plant them in moist soil in the spring.  Some people plant them indoors in small pots first (keeping the soil quite moist) and then transplant them outdoors once the seedlings have become established.  There are lots of web sites that give more detailed recommendations.

- Red oak trees, like most humans, prefer sunshine.  If you're going to grow them, you should plant them in the open rather than underneath an existing forest canopy.

- Oak trees first became a distinct species about 65 million trees ago.  This means that they are much older than humans, and they started to appear about the same time that the dinosaurs died off.

Here is a photo of some of our red oak seedlings:

Thanks for reading!
- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca

Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

 

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The White Birch Tree (Betula papyrifera)

Last week we looked at the yellow birch. This week, we'll look at another birch tree which is more well-known: the paper birch. Unlike the yellow birch, the paper birch grows well almost everywhere in Canada, and due to its white bark, it is something of an iconic tree. The white bark is obviously the reason why this species is perhaps more commonly referred to as white birch. In some areas, it is also called "canoe birch."

Let's start with a photo of a semi-mature tree, so we can get a good look at the bark. If you go back to our yellow birch post, you'll see that the colour difference is fairly obvious on your computer screen, but you may not find this to be the case in the field.  Sometimes, a yellow birch will appear to be a lot more pale in colour, or a "white" birch might appear slightly creamy-coloured, which can really confuse observers.  A better way to improve your identification skills is to look carefully at the composition of the bark, and the way that it flakes or peels off the trunk.  Strips of paper birch bark are generally thicker than that of yellow birch bark.  Even more telling is the outward appearance.  While the yellow birch flakes in many small curls, paper birch usually peels off in much larger sections.  In some instances, on mature trees, you might almost be able to peel off a piece that is about the size of a piece of photocopy paper.  There is almost universal agreement that the paper birch is a very "pretty" tree.

Despite the very white bark on mature and semi-mature trees, the bark of juvenile paper birch trees is actually quite red!  This is the case from the time that the tree is just a germinant or whip until the diameter of the truck is thicker than an inch or two.  Here's a photo.  Take a close look at the tiny white marks all over the red bark, which help clarify that these trees are paper birch:

Unfortunately, the paper birch is not as healthy as the yellow birch.  A mature paper birch may only live about half as long as a yellow birch, as most only survive for about a hundred years.  Incidentally, paper birch trees that live in colder climates tend to live longer than specimens in the southern part of their range.  On a positive note, a single birch tree can release more than a MILLION tiny seeds (samara) in a season, so one mature tree can help generate a huge number of eventual successors.

Paper birch supposedly grows to be slightly smaller than yellow birch at maturity, but we've found that the two species are quite similar.  We have a number of mature birch of both species on some of the properties that we manage, and many of the paper birch trees are around twenty meters (seventy feet) high, with a DBH (diameter at breast height) of about 60 cm (two feet).  This is similar to the size of mature yellow birch in this region.

Here's a range map of the paper birch, courtesy of Wikipedia:

 

Fun fact:  The paper birch is the provincial tree of Saskatchewan.  It's also the state tree of New Hampshire.

Let's get back to examining the paper birch in more detail.  Have you ever walked through the woods and found a rotten piece of paper birch on the ground, and discovered that while the bark is still intact, the wood inside has completely rotted away?  This happens fairly often.  This is because the bark of the paper birch has a very high oil content, and is very waterproof.  This helps ensure that it is more resistant to rot than the wood in the core of the tree.

Paper birch trees are "monoecious."  This means that an individual tree has both male and female flowers, called catkins.  The catkins tend to develop in May or June.  Female catkins are greenish, and are smaller than the brownish male catkins.  By early fall, the seeds have matured and begin to fall.  Seeds continue to fall throughout the winter.  Most people wouldn't be able to describe a birch seed when asked, because they are fairly tiny and not at all obvious to someone taking a walk through the woods.  However, next time that you're walking through a stand of birch trees with snow on the ground, take a close look at see if you see a lot of small brown specs on the surface of the snow.  These may be birch seeds!

To see a good illustration showing how small birch seeds are, check out this short YouTube video from someone who is demonstrating how to grow silver birch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zcyYRqe9-g

Ok, it's time for some more fun facts about paper birch!

1.  If you're planting both paper birch and black walnut on the same property, don't plant them close to each other!  The roots of the black walnut secrete a chemical (juglone) which is very toxic to paper birch trees.

2.  Although paper birch bark is a staple food for moose, it is full of lignin which is hard to digest.  For this reason, moose need to eat many other types of plants in combination with the birch.  Incidentally, deer also love to eat the bark of the paper birch, especially once the snow cover gets deep and ground forage is hard to get to.

3.  The leaves of the paper birch often appear in pairs.  They have toothed edges which are called margins.

Birch trees are an important part of the mix of hardwoods that we plant on the properties that we manage.  We have to think about carbon sequestration and longevity, so we tend to plant a greater number of yellow birch than paper birch.  However, paper birch are very attractive so it would be a failure not to include them.  As a forest reaches a steady state maturity, with old trees being gradually replaced by young trees, a mix of yellow and white birch is beneficial.  Having said that, paper birch is more of a pioneer species than yellow birch, which means that it thrives better than yellow birch in openly disturbed forests with lots of exposure to sunlight.  In the long term, we feel that yellow birch (a shade-tolerant successional species) has a bit of an advantage over paper birch for a mature forest with lots of shade.  Here's a photo of some of our white birch seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.

The Yellow Birch tree (Betula alleghaniensis)

The Yellow Birch tree is also known in many areas as Golden Birch.  Our Quebecois readers will certainly be quite familiar with this species, as it is the provincial tree of Quebec.  In that province, it is sometimes referred to as the merisier.

The yellow birch tree has long been sought as an important tree in North America's lumber industry.  Traditionally, its wood has been used for everything from flooring and furniture and veneer to doors, cabinets, and even toothpicks.  If you go to a lumber store and buy birch, chances are high that it is yellow birch that you're getting.  The wood of the yellow birch can be polished quite well, and also looks good when stain is applied.  The colour of the wood is not consistent though.  It can sometimes be quite white, but some trees tend to be very dark yellowish.  The name though comes from the golden yellowish colour of the bark as the tree starts to mature.  For the kings and queens of old, gold symbolized the crown.  That seems appropriate, since the yellow birch is the most regal of the birches.

Within Canada, yellow birch is only found naturally in the eastern half of the country.  It's a very common hardwood in Quebec and the Maritime provinces, and down through the eastern seaboard of the US.  Here's a range map, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Although yellow birch is not known for being a tree that likes to live in swamps, I've found in the past that I tend to discover more yellow birch in wetter areas and slopes than in flat open areas, whereas I see more paper birch in those drier areas.

Yellow birch will eventually grow to be the largest birch species in North America.  They can grow to be more than 25m tall (80 feet) and almost a meter (three feet) in diameter, although mature trees are more likely to be a bit narrower than that.  Yellow birch trees can live to be more than two hundred years old if left undisturbed.

The seeds of the yellow birch are interesting.  The tree produces significant amounts of seed some years, and minor amounts in other years.  The yellow birch has catkins which are the tree's flowers.  Each tree is "monoecious" which means that it produces both male and female flowers on the same tree.  The male catkins hang down from the ends of branches, and are usually a couple inches long.  The female catkins are only half this size, and grow upright beside the leaves.  When the tiny seeds are released in the autumn, they don't tend to establish when they sit on top of a layer of leaf litter.  However, if they land in an area with more moisture, they are more likely to germinate (especially in moss or in cracks of logs and rocks).  Yellow birch also grows from seed quite easily in nurseries.

Yellow birch can be distinguished from paper birch fairly easily by looking at the bark.  In addition to differences in the colour, the yellow birch peels off in very fine, small, curly strips compared to paper birch.  Many of these peelings are less than a centimeter wide.

Historically, the yellow birch had many uses beyond lumber.  In addition to being used to make tea, yellow birch can be used to make a syrup, much like maple syrup.  Although it is usually quite a bit more expensive than the more traditional maple syrup, you should be able to find it in a lot of Canadian grocery stores.  You can find books on Amazon that describe the science of tapping and distilling birch syrup, although this information is usually included as side notes in books about making maple syrup.  Birch syrup needs to be distilled more, thus a smaller volume of the end product is produced than from the same volume of maple sap.  

Birch syrup and maple syrup have very different tastes to them.  This isn't surprising when you dig deeper.  Maple syrup is mostly composed of sucrose, whereas the sugars in birch syrup are mostly fructose with a bit of glucose.  Birch syrup is much darker and stronger than maple syrup, and arguably quite a bit healthier for you.  Some people compare the taste of birch syrup with that of molasses, depending on how it is made.  Due to this, many people prefer the taste of maple syrup.  For some, birch syrup is an acquired taste.  There's a good article about birch syrup at this link:

https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/2015/04/weighing-the-pros/

Aside from its use as a hardwood for lumber, for firewood, or for the production of birch syrup, here are a few fun facts about the yellow birch:

1.  A decoction of birch (boiling out a liqueur from the plant) can be used as a sleep aid.

2.  When turned into an essential oil, yellow birch is often used as an anti-inflammatory to relieve joint or muscle pain (applied externally), and is also used as a massage oil.

3.  Yellow birch is used as a source of "Oil of Wintergreen" which is used as a flavoring and/or active ingredient in various medicines.

At Replant.ca Environmental, we include yellow birch trees in some of our species mixes in eastern Canada.  We typically source them from the Scott & Stewart forest nursery in Nova Scotia.  The yellow birch is a fast growing hardwood, and as you'll have learned by now, it's a great species to include in our Canadian forests.  Here is a photo of some of our yellow birch seedlings:

Thanks for reading ...

- Jonathan Clark
www.replant-environmental.ca



Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests.  We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases.  We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world.  If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page.  Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!

Teachers are welcome to use content from this post for their classes.  If you know a teacher who might like to use this information, please share it with them!  The more that people learn about trees, the better our world will be.

To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website.  Thanks so much for your interest!

 

Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects.  Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.