Saturday, October 3, 2009

Looking Up Trees

Do you know how to tell a red maple from a sugar maple? Granted, it's harder to do in winter, but it's hard now, too. I paraded around the woods today with thumbtacks to label trees we might tap, staring up 75 feet and pondering: Is that a curved sinus? Are there really five lobes, or did a caterpillar chew the side? I could look at leaves on the ground, but I'm never quite sure if leaf A derived from tree A or B or maybe blew over from C. The only tree I am pretty sure about is the one that turns scarlet earlier than any of the others. It's a red maple. I think.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, I think swamp maple turns red early -- it's the one in the depressions and along the open marshes as you drive about, and was red almost a month ago in spots.

KAZ said...

Swamp maple = red maple!