Silver Maple

Silver Maple

Acer saccharinum

When I was a kid there were several large silver maples growing in our yard and in our neighbor's yard.  I spent a fair amount of my childhood climbing those trees, swinging from ropes hung from them, and playing around them.  We raked up the leaves and jumped in them, then burnt the piles. They were "home" for games of tag and end zone markers for football games.  There were perhaps a million kids hanging around the neighborhood and I don't recall anyone ever falling out or breaking anything.  One awe-inspiring experience when I was little was watching one of the "big" kids climbing astonishingly high up the tree.  I couldn't wait till I grew up and could climb that high!



Pistillate flower. (female, if you will)

Staminate flower

Young tree bark

Middle-age tree bark

Old tree bark



Fall leaves show many colors