Maple wood

This plant is often found in our latitudes, although it comes from North America. Maple wood is often used in the greening of cities. This tree reaches 20 m in height and 0.9 m in diameter. His leaves are very beautiful. Maple is a tree that is attractive throughout the vegetation period. Its leaves are complex, odd-pinnate, with 3-7 leaves, elliptical or broadly ovoid, 15-17 cm long and 3-7 cm wide. The leaf on the tip has a pointed tip and a wedge-shaped base. It looks like an ash leaf. It is lobed or rough-serrate, smooth. The location of the leaves on the shoot is opposite.

Maple leaves are flowered with dioecious, yellowish flowers. Male inflorescences have a penciform shape, with thin pubescent pedicels, and females represent a drooping brush. Maple fruit - the so-called "lionfish", which fly well with gusts of wind, have a length of up to 4 cm, ripen in August, but still hang on the tree for a long time. His blades diverge at an acute angle. The maples easily reproduce by seeds, so often fallen and blown by the wind lobes germinate the next year. By spring, the fruits of the maple are divided into 2 halves, and from each of them appears a young sprout.

Its spread in landscape design, maple tree got, however, like all other species of maple, thanks to its decorative foliage, which by autumn takes on an incredibly beautiful coloring. It is painted in a red-yellow color, which gives a special kind of planting. On this plant are often simultaneously the leaves, painted in 3 different shades: green, yellow and red.

In April, this tree reveals large whitish, fluffy buds. The largest of them sit on the very tops of the branches, they are slightly smaller from their sides, and the smallest ones are on the side branches. From the blossoming apex bud grows a large inflorescence, consisting of greenish flowers. Next to them are 2-3 pairs of unblown leaves. During the flowering of maple, which usually begins in May, the leaves resemble a folded fan. Due to this, little flowers are not blocked by leaf blades and attract the strong, pleasant aroma of insects (flies, bees, beetles) that successfully pollinate this plant.

The nectar of flowers is distinguished by a unique convex disc, around which there are 10 stamens, and in its center there is a hemispherical pistil, having 2 bent in different directions of stigma. Later, from the pestle with these stigmas, the fetus develops. Not all the flowers of the maple tree are able to form the fruit. They are bisexual: some with pestles and stamens, others have only pistils and underdeveloped stamens, and still others - only stamens and underdeveloped pistils. Fruits are formed only in flowers of the first type.

Maple leaves are fast-growing, but it is also a fairly long-lasting tree. A young plant in well-lit places annually increases in height by almost 1 m, so this type of trees is advisable to grow in cities where fast greening of streets, parks and squares is required. In settlements such trees usually grow up to 15 m. The average age of the maple tree is 80 years, but there are also more durable specimens. The tree is drought-resistant and unpretentious.

This maple is often used for breeding new, refined varieties. So, the flamingo variety became very popular in gardening, in which young leaves have a white-pink color. From the maple tree, varieties with white and yellow leaves were obtained. With a strong pruning, this plant species can be successfully grown as a shrub.