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Norway maple

2 photos

Gmihail / Wikimedia Commons - CC BY-SA 3.0 RS

Norway maple

Acer platanoides

Norway maple (Acer platanoides) is a dense, symmetrical European shade tree that was planted across North American towns and streets for most of the twentieth century, largely as a replacement for elms lost to Dutch elm disease. Plotwright does not recommend planting it in North America. It is listed as a noxious weed across the Midwest, banned or restricted in a growing number of states, and Missouri Botanical Garden flags it outright as not recommended for planting: it seeds prolifically, and the seedlings carpet woodland floors and displace native understory. The traits that make it a problem are the same ones that made it popular. It leafs out earlier and holds its leaves later than the natives around it, casting shade in the shoulder seasons when spring ephemerals need light, and it pairs that dense canopy with a shallow, greedy root system, so very little will grow beneath it. It is genuinely handsome, genuinely tough in compacted urban soil, and reliably golden in autumn. In Europe, where it belongs, it is a fine tree. In North America, plant a sugar maple, red maple or a native oak instead and you get the same shade without handing the local woodland a decades-long problem.

Climate fit: narrow (39/100)

Structure

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Mature size

40-50 ft tall · 30 ft apart

Hardy in zones

3a-7b

brutally cold to cold winters

Native in Illinois

No

Related products

Cold hardiness

These values are location-based: this location's current hardiness is the baseline, and the 2050 value is a projected future climate for this same location.

Now

Zone 6b

Plotwright

USDA Zone 6b

-5°F to 0°F

Well-suited

2050

2100

Zone 7a

Plotwright

0°F to 5°F

Well-suited

In plain terms: This location has cold winters. Its winters are projected to keep warming through 2050.

✓

Well-suited today and still thriving in 2050.

Heat tolerance

Heat tolerance values are location-based too: heat days today are observed at this site, and the 2050 value projects this same location under a future climate.

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Where this plant fits

Suitable across 38 ecoregions - 29 climate-resilient through 2070 · 6 suited today · 3 newly possible by 2070. Best matches first.

Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests

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Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

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Arizona Mountains forests

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Atlantic coastal pine barrens

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Blue Mountains forests

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Central Tallgrass prairie

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Central-Southern Cascades Forests

Colorado Rockies forests

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What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

30 ft

Habit

Medium-to-large deciduous shade tree, 40 to 50 feet tall and 30 to 50 feet wide, with a dense, symmetrical, rounded crown carried on a single straight trunk. The canopy is noticeably heavier and more light-tight than a sugar maple of the same size, which is both its appeal as a shade tree and the root of its ecological problem.

Care tips

•

Check your state and municipal noxious-weed lists before buying one. Norway maple is regulated or banned in a growing number of US states, and "widely sold" is not the same as "legal to plant here".

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If you want the same job done by a better tree, plant sugar maple (Acer saccharum) for the autumn colour, red maple (Acer rubrum) for speed and adaptability, or a native oak for the wildlife value. All three give shade without seeding into the neighbouring woods.

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If you already have a mature one, the practical work is seedling removal. Pull volunteers annually while they are small - a mature tree will keep producing them, and they establish in shade where most seedlings cannot.

Lifecycle

Planting

Where it is legal and appropriate to plant - which in most of North America it is not - it takes average, medium-moisture, well-drained soil in full sun to part shade, and tolerates a very wide soil range plus urban pollutants. Check your state and municipal noxious-weed lists first: it is regulated in a growing number of them.

Transplanting

Transplants easily at almost any nursery size, which is part of why it was planted so widely. Move young stock while dormant.

Early growth

Moderately fast and untroublesome. Prune for a single dominant leader early; the species is less prone to the low codominant forks that plague silver maple, but a young tree still benefits from structural pruning.

Maturity

Reaches full size in roughly 50 years and is long-lived. Expect surface roots, a canopy that suppresses lawn and understory, and abundant self-sown seedlings every year. Prune in summer or early autumn rather than late winter, when maples bleed sap heavily.

Propagation

Effortless and unwanted from seed - the paired samaras, held in a distinctively wide, almost straight line, germinate readily and in quantity. This is the whole invasion mechanism, so removing seedlings from a garden with a mature tree is ongoing work rather than a one-off.

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

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American arborvitae

A dense, conical-to-narrow-pyramidal evergreen tree native to eastern and central North America, prized as a screening and foundation conifer. Flat, fan-like sprays of scale-like, aromatic yellow-green foliage clothe the tree from the ground up, and red-brown bark exfoliates on mature trunks. Wild trees can reach 40 to 60 feet but cultivated plants typically stay near 20 to 30 feet; small urn-shaped cones and dense evergreen cover make it valuable food and shelter for birds.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

A medium-to-large native shade tree of central and eastern North America, reaching 50 to 80 feet with an ovate-rounded crown and large, asymmetric heart-shaped leaves. In June it carries pale-yellow, intensely fragrant flowers on pendulous cymes - each cluster hung from a distinctive strap-like leafy bract - that ripen into pea-sized nutlets. The fragrant June bloom is a premier nectar source: Missouri Botanical Garden lists it as attracting bees and butterflies, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as having special value to both native and honey bees.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

Once the dominant canopy hardwood of the eastern United States forest - an estimated four billion trees, prized for fast growth, rot-resistant timber, and an enormous annual crop of sweet edible nuts that fed people, livestock, and wildlife alike. In the early 1900s an introduced Asian fungus, chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica), swept through and functionally destroyed it: by the 1950s the species was effectively extinct as a mature forest tree. Surviving root systems still send up sprouts from old stumps, but the blight almost always girdles and kills them before they can grow large enough to flower and reproduce. The honest reality for a gardener is that you cannot reliably grow a mature wild-type American chestnut today. The realistic paths are blight-resistant backcross hybrids from The American Chestnut Foundation or transgenic blight-tolerant lines still being deployed - not a pure wild seedling, which the blight will almost certainly kill.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

The American elm is the great vase-shaped shade tree that once arched over Main Streets and town commons across eastern North America - a fast, extremely cold-hardy deciduous tree of 60 to 80 feet whose upright trunk divides into a fountain of high, spreading limbs that meet overhead to form a living cathedral ceiling. That iconic form, and the species' tolerance of wet soil and tough urban conditions, made it the default American street tree for a century. Then Dutch elm disease (DED) - an introduced fungal disease carried by elm bark beetles - swept through in the 20th century and killed the vast majority of mature street and shade elms across the continent. The honest reality for a gardener today is blunt: do not plant the unselected wild species expecting it to survive. If you want the American-elm form, plant a DED-tolerant cultivar bred and selected for resistance - 'Princeton', 'Valley Forge', 'New Harmony', or 'Jefferson' - and say so plainly. Where it does grow, it is fast, hardy to USDA zone 3, and remarkably forgiving of wet ground and city stress.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

The only native U.S. holly with both spiny green leaves and bright red berries - an upright, pyramidal, broadleaf evergreen tree that slowly matures to 15 to 30 feet in cultivation (to 50 feet in the wild). Thick, leathery, deep green leaves bear spiny marginal teeth, and pollinated female trees carry showy red-to-orange drupes that ripen in fall and persist through winter as bird food. This is the classic "Christmas holly" of wreaths and decorations.

Tree

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

A small-to-medium understory tree of dry, rocky eastern-North-American woods, named for its drooping clusters of papery, sac-like seed pods that resemble the fruit of hops. The birch-like, sharply-serrated leaves turn an undistinguished yellow in fall, and reddish-brown male catkins persist on the bare branches through winter. Also called ironwood for its extremely hard, dense wood; tough, low-maintenance, and drought-tolerant once established.

Tree

Full sun / Part shade

Educator packet

Plant packet

Norway maple educator packet

Norway maple (Acer platanoides) is a dense, symmetrical European shade tree that was planted across North American towns and streets for most of the twentieth century, largely as a replacement for elms lost to Dutch elm disease. Plotwright does not recommend planting it in North America. It is listed as a noxious weed across the Midwest, banned or restricted in a growing number of states, and Missouri Botanical Garden flags it outright as not recommended for planting: it seeds prolifically, and the seedlings carpet woodland floors and displace native understory. The traits that make it a problem are the same ones that made it popular. It leafs out earlier and holds its leaves later than the natives around it, casting shade in the shoulder seasons when spring ephemerals need light, and it pairs that dense canopy with a shallow, greedy root system, so very little will grow beneath it. It is genuinely handsome, genuinely tough in compacted urban soil, and reliably golden in autumn. In Europe, where it belongs, it is a fine tree. In North America, plant a sugar maple, red maple or a native oak instead and you get the same shade without handing the local woodland a decades-long problem.

Scientific name

Acer platanoides

Plant type

tree

Hardiness

3a-7b

Light

full-sun, part-shade

Moisture

moderate

Spacing

360 inches