#oregon maple

[tilbageidanmark]

Big maple leaf

[tattooed-alchemist]

Other Seattle locals tell me these gorgeous trees starting to bloom near my mom and dad’s house are big leaf maples, aka Acer macrophyllum, aka Oregon maples.  And the flower clusters can be eaten raw when full of nectar.

[friendsrpbg]

J20161006-0017—Acer macrophyllum—RPBG by John Rusk Via Flickr: Acer macrophyllum—bigleaf maple. California does not possess the large areas of hardwood forests that cover much of the eastern United States. Displays of fall colors are localized and limited for the most part to understory shrubs and trees. There are, of course, the glorious aspens as well as several species of maples. Bigleaf maple is simply glorious when the sun backlights the leaves. Photographed at Regional Parks Botanic Garden located in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley, CA.

[musictherapy611]

Daily Tree: acer macrophyllum

In English please: bigleaf maple, Oregon maple

Grows: Pacific coast from southernmost Alaska down to Washington, Oregon,and California; less frequently further west in California’s Sierra Madres and Idaho

Conservation status: secure

Wikipedia page: here

Photo 1: https : // selectree . calpoly . edu/tree-detail/acer-macrophyllum

Photo 2: www . nwplants . com/business/catalog/ace_mac.html

[fruitgoat]

Just in case you’d never really appreciated the size of a real maple leaf before. Oregon Maple was always what I judged other maples by. When I was a kid, I figured the Japanese Celebration Maple in the backyard and the littler maples I saw around town were just too young to grow proper leaves. In my defense, I was kinda right.

[image description: a big leaf maple leaf that extends beyond a standard one foot ruler on both sides. Also pictured is a little concrete pig; the pig is napping and looks quite happy, it’s probably dreaming of using the leaf as a blanket.]

[fruitgoat]

Oh!  I never posted this here.

A week or so ago I was walking through the woods inspecting storm damage.  (We lost two trees; an already dead doug fir near the road making for easy cleanup and an older but skinny doug fir in the Dome - I don’t know actual age on the older one, maybe 60 years?  *shrug*  It was like 80 feet tall?)

But it was one of the first walks I’d taken there since the leaves started carpeting the ground.  We have a lot of tress so there were a lot of leaves.  A LOT OF LEAVES.  Some of the trees are Oregon Maple.  Also called Bigleaf Maple.  And this year, they delivered.

I brought back this leaf for examination.

Yes, that is a standard footlong ruler not quite keeping up.  And yes, that is one leaf.  One of the larger ones, sure.  But I left a multitude of others this size quietly decomposing into nutrients in the woods.

[crudlynaturephotos]