Silver maple

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

32.5 ft

Habit

Very large deciduous shade tree, 50 to 80 feet tall and 40 to 60 feet wide, with a short trunk dividing low into several heavy upright limbs and an open, spreading, often irregular crown. Growth is fast - frequently 2 to 3 feet a year on a moist site - and the branch structure that speed produces is the source of most of its problems.

Care tips

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Site it for the roots, not the canopy. Keep it 40 feet or more from paving, foundations, septic fields and drain lines - the shallow aggressive root system, not the size, is what causes most of the trouble people report with this tree.

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Prune for a single dominant leader in the first ten years. Left alone it forks low into codominant stems with included bark, and that union is precisely what tears out in an ice storm two decades later.

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Prune in summer or early autumn. Maples bleed sap heavily in late winter and early spring; the bleeding is not fatal but it is messy and avoidable.

Lifecycle

Planting

Plant in spring or autumn in full sun to part shade. It is genuinely indifferent to soil - clay, sand, acid or alkaline - and tolerates periodic flooding better than almost any other large shade tree, which is why it dominates river bottoms. Give it 40 to 60 feet of room and keep it well away from paving, foundations, septic fields and drain lines.

Transplanting

Transplants easily; that ease is part of why it was planted so widely. Move young stock while dormant. Established trees resent root disturbance mainly because so much of the root system sits in the top foot of soil.

Early growth

Very fast, often 2 to 3 feet a year. Prune for structure early and deliberately: the species naturally forks low into several codominant leaders with included bark, and that union is what fails in storms twenty years later. Establishing a single dominant leader in the first decade is the single highest-value thing you can do for this tree.

Maturity

Reaches full size in roughly 50 years. Expect surface roots, heavy seed set, and periodic limb loss in wind, ice and wet snow. Prune in summer or early autumn rather than late winter, when maples bleed sap heavily.

Propagation

Effortless from seed - samaras ripen in late spring and germinate immediately without any chilling, which is unusual among maples and why seedlings appear in gutters, beds and lawns everywhere near a mature tree. Named cultivars are grafted or budded.

Native range

Native across 37 US states + 5 CA provinces.

Worldwide native range.

Native ecoregions

Naturally belongs in 20 ecoregions - its native range crosses a state or province each one spans (not necessarily this exact habitat).

Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Canadian Aspen forests and parklands

Central Tallgrass prairie

Cross-Timbers savanna-woodland

Eastern Canadian Forest-Boreal transition

Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests

Flint Hills tallgrass prairie

Gulf of St. Lawrence lowland forests

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.

Climate notes

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Native across eastern and central North America, from New Brunswick and Ontario south to the Florida panhandle and west to the eastern Great Plains, concentrated on floodplains, river banks and wet bottomland. The range shown here is the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center per-state native distribution; POWO returned HTTP 403 throughout this batch, so the WGSRPD range was joined from that state list rather than from Kew directly.

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NC State Extension rates it USDA zones 3a to 9b - one of the widest ranges of any North American shade tree, and a genuine strength in a warming climate where a tree planted now must tolerate a hotter version of its site.

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Its defining site tolerance is WET. It withstands spring flooding and saturated soil that would kill most large shade trees, and also handles compacted urban soil and a wide pH range. It is less happy in prolonged drought, where it sheds interior leaves early.

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The honest caveat is structural, not climatic: brittle wood and low codominant forks make this one of the most storm-damage-prone large trees in cultivation, and its aggressive shallow roots lift paving and enter drain lines. Where those risks are unacceptable, a red maple (Acer rubrum) or a Freeman maple (Acer x freemanii, the natural silver-by-red hybrid bred specifically to keep the growth rate and lose the brittleness) does the same job with far less regret.

Similar plants

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

Thuja occidentalis

American arborvitae

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.

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.

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.

A tough, medium-sized native tree of the eastern and midwestern United States, grown as much for its showy edible orange fruit as for its distinctive thick, dark gray bark broken into rectangular blocks. Small urn-shaped white-to-greenish-yellow flowers open in May and June, and the sweet fruit ripens after frost. Largely dioecious - a female tree needs a male pollinizer nearby to set fruit - and notably drought- and walnut-tolerant once established.

Full sun / Part shade

A small native deciduous tree (or thicket-forming, suckering shrub) of eastern and central North America, grown for clouds of fragrant white 5-petaled flowers that open in March before the leaves and for the edible red plums that follow in early summer. It forms a broad, spreading crown with attractive dark reddish-brown twigs that sometimes carry thorny lateral branchlets. A documented larval host for swallowtails and other butterflies, with flowers of special value to native, bumble, and honey bees.