What Time of Year Does the Silver Maple Tree Put Out?

Flower Emergence

• The silver maple is the first maple to bloom in North America -- as early as February. These blooms emerge well before the tree's spring blooms do and provide an important food source for wildlife in the late winter or early spring, when supplies are at their lowest. These flowers are greenish-yellow and emerge on axillary fascicles of the previous year's shoots or on spurlike branchlets that developed the year before.

Types of Flowers

• Even though the silver maple is one species, there are four types of silver maple trees in terms of reproduction. Some have all male flowers, some have all female flowers with rudimentary pistils, some are hermaphroditic and some are all male with just a few female flowers. Some silver maples can switch from one type in one season to a different type in another, though all flowers emerge in early spring. This means it is best to plant a few silver maples in proximity to have the best chance they will pollinate each other.

Fruit and Seeds

• Silver maples begin to produce seeds immediately after a flower's pollination; the flowers begin to wither and the ovaries swell within 24 hours. A week after pollination, a tiny fruit 1/4 inch long has already developed; within three weeks, mature, 2-inch-long samaras are present. The ripening fruit colors range from green to rose to yellow to reddish brown.

Leaves

• Silver maples are named for the silvery sheen on the undersides of their spring and summer bright-green leaves. Early on in the fall, those leaves turn greenish-yellow to bright yellow. The Freeman maple, also known as the Autumn Blaze, is a hybrid of the red and silver maple. It, too, grows quickly, but produces a vibrant fall display of orange-red foliage that persists much later than most maples.