Using PL-Premium (construction adhesive) to fill holes in tree trunks

[Sum Guy]

Um - I didn't think that silver maples gave good syrup. That's why sugar maples are called "sugar maples".

[Jim Elbrecht]

I have 2 sugar maples on the other side of my house. Probably about the same age as my silver- about 2feet in diameter. [the silver is

3-4] I tapped them a couple years. They gave less sap and it was not as sweet as the silver.

I've talked to others with the same experience. Sugar maples are less prone to limb damage and don't have surface roots. But other than that I don't know why sugarbushes don't use them more.

Jim [BTW- I've never tapped them, but others have extolled the virtues of white birch and Box Elder [aka Black Maple] sap.]

[Gary Heston]

In article , RicodJour wrote: [ ... ]

The proper way to prune a silver maple (much different from red or sugar maples) is horizontally just above ground level. Then, apply copious amounts of Roundup or similar herbicide to kill the roots, including where they break the surface and sprout more silver maples (about every two or three feet--on each root).

Those roots were a nightmare when cutting the grass; some of the roots would get high enough to interfere with the mower blade, ocasionally bending it. I cut mine down within a few years of buying my first house. The sugar maple which was planted at the same time (1956) is still growing well. I bought the house in 1979; at that time the silver maple was about 25' tall, the sugar maple was probably over 40' and now is at least 60. Sugar and red maples are keepers; silver maples are pretty (white bark, oval leaves dark green on top and silver-white on the bottom, hence the name) but incompatible with a lawn or any structures.

I don't miss my silver maple at all. I miss the sugar maple that was hit by lightning and eventually blown down back in the '90s. The remaining two are still great trees.

Gary

[Gary Heston]

That's a sugar maple. Leaves shaped like the one on the Canadian flag, with dark grey-brown bark and well-behaved roots (they stay underground).

Silver maples have white bark, leaves are pointed ovals, dark green on top and silver-white on the bottom, with roots that break the surface every 2-3 feet.

Sugar maples are good trees; silver maples are not.

Gary

[Jim Elbrecht]

No. no. no, and definitely don't.

Also known as swamp, river, white, soft, or water maple. The Latin taxonomy is Acer saccharinum. An argument has been made that Linnaeus meant for the Silver Maple to be a sugar maple-- it was a century later that someone named the Eastern US 'sugar' maple. ("The Sugar Maples" by Benjamin Franklin Bush, American Midland Naturalist, Vol. 12, No. 11 (Sep., 1931), pp. 499-503)

See my other post for my own experience with both species on my property.

There are no bad trees-- just trees that don't please us sometimes. I am willing to put up with my Silver's foibles in exchange for its benefits.

Jim