Family: Aceraceae, Maple view all from this family

Description Large tree with narrow or rounded, compact crown and red flowers, fruit, leafstalks, and autumn foliage.
Height: 60-90' (18-27 m).
Diameter: 2 1/2' (0.8 m).
Leaves: opposite; 2 1/2-4" (6-10 cm) long and nearly as wide. Broadly ovate, with 3 shallow short-pointed lobes (sometimes with 2 smaller lobes near base); irregularly and wavy saw-toothed, with 5 main veins from base; long red or green leafstalk. Dull green above, whitish and hairy beneath; turning red, orange, and yellow in autumn.
Bark: gray; thin, smooth, becoming fissured into long thin scaly ridges.
Twigs: reddish, slender, hairless.
Flowers: 1/8" (3 mm) long; reddish; crowded in nearly stalkless clusters along twigs; male and female in separate clusters; in late winter or very early spring before leaves.
Fruit: 3/4-1" (2-2.5 cm) long including long wing; paired forking keys; red turning reddish-brown; 1-seeded; maturing in spring.

Habitat Wet or moist soils of stream banks, valleys, swamps, and uplands and sometimes on dry ridges; in mixed hardwood forests.

Range Extreme SE. Manitoba east to E. Newfoundland, south to S. Florida, west to E. Texas; to 6000' (1829 m).

Discussion Red Maple is a handsome shade tree, displaying red in different seasons. Pioneers made ink and cinnamon-brown and black dyes from a bark extract. It has the greatest north-south distribution of all tree species along the East Coast.