The Red Maple was present in the yard when we moved in in May 2011 (together with the Live Oak and 10 small fruit trees). It was in a sorry state due to the drought, with the top part already dead. We gave it a deep watering and it sprung back to life in 2012. Since then it has grown vigorously, putting on tremendous girth and height each year.
Every late winter it produces a large beautiful crop of red flowers, but no samaras, showing that it is a male. The pictures below are from 2012. Although Red Maples in the north of the country turn red in the autumn, my Red Maple turns yellow.
On February 11th 2017, the red flowers were out again.
On March 14th 2017, new red leaves were emerging.
On June 11th, I noticed that the upper leaves of the tree had the same unidentified affliction of large pale yellow spots as I had noticed on my Nuttall Oaks, Cherrybark Oak, and Blackjack Oak in May. The Red Maple is quite severely affected - I wished I knew what this disease was! Somebody suggested it might have been caused by herbicidal drift from a nearby lot.
On August 19th 2017, the upper leaves that were most affected by the yellow spots looked like they were drying out. On December 9th 2017, there was some nice yellow autumn color (see picture near top of page).
On December 17th the remaining leaves were all pale yellow. In mid-February 2018, the Red Maple was blossoming very nicely.
In August 2019, the Red Maple tree, after several years of being totally healthy, suddenly began to look terrible. About 95% of the leaves suddenly went brown and fell off, leaving just a few partially green leaves at the bottom of the tree and at the very tips of the upper branches. I think it may have been caused by the multiple weeks of temperatures above 90 degrees F, with no rain. I had given the tree a deep watering most weekends, but only close to the trunk, so that will not have helped most of the roots which are spread out much further from the trunk, where the clay has turned to concrete. I bought a sprinkler and sprinkled in a wide radius around the tree - hoping to arrest this catastrophic decline.
The tree fully leafed out again in February 2020. I purchased a second (15 gallon) Red Maple tree from Houston Plants and Garden World and planted it on March 8th 2020. The reason I purchased it was because I noticed that it had several seeds hanging from it, and was therefore a female tree. I thought it would make a good companion to the already established male tree.
On inspection of the young leaves I saw that the undersides were covered in a thick white fuzz, suggesting that it is an Acer rubrum var. drummondii.
In mid June 2020 I noticed that one of the three major upper branches of my large original Red Maple was showing signs of leaf scorch, the disease which I thought was responsible for killing my Red Maple "October Glory", Mexican Sugar Maple, and Bigtooth Maple. Several of the twigs on this major branch had leaves which were chlorotic and browning around the margins and several twigs were already bare. Bacterial leaf scorch is transmitted by sap sucking insects, so I treated the tree with systemic imidacloprid and did the same with the newly planted female Red Maple. As far as I understand, once afflicted with bacterial leaf scorch, a tree loses more branches every year and eventually dies. What a disaster - this was one of my biggest healthiest trees. On July 18th 2020, I decided to use a pole-saw to remove the large infected branch - actually the size of a small tree. On examination of multiple cross-sections of the branch, I observed black-rimmed streaks running all the way through the sapwood - in fact the brand new saw was completely stained black. This led me to realize that this is probably not bacterial leaf scorch, but likely verticillium wilt, which is also a death sentence. The rest of the tree looked OK, but with this disease, year-by-year the infection gradually spreads through the whole tree. The disease also spreads from tree to tree via the roots, so it is likely that the new female Red Maple that I planted nearby earlier this year, will also succumb. In early February 2021 the Red Maple was blossoming again nicely - this time I got a picture from above using my drone.
The new female Red Maple was also blossoming and small red seeds were starting to appear.
However, the big freeze of mid February 2021 came and killed all the blossoms and seeds. It went down to 12 degrees F in the yard one night, which was the lowest I've ever seen it. We also lost all our utilities for a while: electricity, gas, water, cell phone, and internet. The electricity came back on again within about 6 hours, but the water took 2 days, and the internet 4 days. Many others in Texas were not so lucky.
Well, I bought that female Red Maple last year specifically to watch the seeds growing - that didn't work out. |
Red Maples #1 and #2 (late June and early July 2021)
Red Maple (early July 2020)
Red Maple (end of June 2019)
Red Maple (July 2018)
Red Maple (July 2017)
Red Maple (July 2016)
Red Maple (July 2015)
Red Maple (2014)
Red Maple (2013)
Red Maple (2012)
Red Maple (2011)
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