I’m in northern New Brunswick (growing zone 4a). We have very few elms left in my town. There are just a few. Though there are Norway maples and green ash trees that were likely replacements of elms, I’ve noticed in the last few decades the most commonly planted municipal tree is Japanese tree lilac. It’s pretty bland. I’d rather see any native species such as sugar maple, beech, oak, ash, (thornless) black locust, white/yellow birch… but these require more maintenance.
They didn't only decide on the norway maple to replace american elm. In fact, the main tree they picked as a replacement was Silver maple, because it had a similar shape. Silver maple seemed like a good option at first but it turned out to be a pain in the ass. It's somewhat brittle, handles pruning very poorly (rot making limbs break off) and has a shallow root system. They solved this problem by hybridizing Red and silver maple called "freeman maple" which is a common choice today. But yes Norway maple was one of the choices as a replacement.
No idea why I was recommended this video since I'm not canadian and the Norway maple is a beloved native species in my country, but I really appreciate your message. Always plant native, nature knows best.
Finally, someone from Norway maples native range. I would love to see photos of this species growing in its natural environment and on European parkways. Since as an arborist here in the states. Searching for info outside US is near impossible. Thanks.
norway maple trees are wonderful. i have 3 of them on my property and the work well with all the other trees on my property including other maples. this video is mostly misnformation
@@scottcarlini954You can find basically pure stands of Norway maple around the Russian city of Samara along the Volga river. It looks like a sugar maple forest. Beautiful thick broad leaf forest.
@@cantwealljustgetalong2It's not misinformation. They do spread rather quickly in the wild. In fact I've heard that around large cities like Boston. Norways have invaded miles of forests and it's only noticeable to the eye as a casual observer during fall because their colours change later than sugar and red maples
I envy the density of saplings on the forest floor. Down in southern New York, the small forest my family had when we owned a proper house was half filled with garlic mustard and barberry bush under the maple and oak area, while the soil teemed with invasive earthworms. Near where the hickories grew, there was a beautiful witch hazel under-story but I don't remember seeing many saplings. That may have been a deer issue as well. Plenty of pine trees were coming up though...
I'm in Zone 6, and we had to cut down the mature norway maple (which was a nauseating purple) which died completely in the space of two years. Every other norway maple in my area that i've seen, no matter the size or age, is either sick or stone dead. good riddance!
Your videos are really inspiring! I'm getting out on hikes more ever since discovering them and I'm being much more observant. Really appreciate the positive vibe you put out and the highly informative videos.
Bias towards not having invasive species is a good thing. Norway maples are objectively bad for the ecosystem. There’s nothing “butthurt” about wanting to protect the wilderness.
What a useless tree. At least here in Canada. In Montréal, when the elms died they replaced them with ash trees... that are all dying now. Québec City took another approche and cared for them instead of cutting them all down like Montréal. Now it has the most beautiful and biggest elms I ever saw. But the Norway maple plague is everywhere here too. There might hope as it also brought it own parasitic fungus that is not affecting other maples. Cheers!
A decade ago I spent time in Regina, Saskatchewan. I walked around the residential streets there, which had beautiful mature white elms as the street trees. What a lovely sight. The city has been taking care of those street trees for decades, I understand. I recall there was a wrapping of some kind around all of the trunks.
Norway Maple was just listed as a weed of concern here in Washington State. They aren't as competitive in wild spaces versus our native Big Leaf Maple, but they still cause localized headaches with their aggressive roots. Keep fighting the good fight against the invaders!
@@cantwealljustgetalong2 I'm not familiar with either of those species. But here in Washington, we have three native maple species, of which are beautiful and much preferred over any species imported from elsewhere. Norway Maple in particular has no place here.
@Fingolfin_the_Warden there are lots of plants/trees that are all over the country that "dont belong here" but people brought them here, a plant doesn't walk here from overseas by itself
@@cantwealljustgetalong2 What a non-statement. Obviously people brought them here, intentionally or not, often with devastating consequences. What point are you trying to make?
Apparently, I am highly allergic to the pollen from Norway maple. Those yellow flowers cause my sinuses to swell shut, usually resulting in a sinus infection within a week. Norway maple pollen is up there with cedar, birch, oak, and hickory.
Finally someone who shares my hatred of invasive variants of native trees. Here in Europe we have a similar problem, that being the spread of the American oak which is displacing native European (summer) oaks. Like the Norway maple, the American oak grows much faster, meaning the wood is of inferior quality. It's not just the hardness of the wood that's inferior though, the American oaks' acorn are much smaller, spikier and tend to stay in their shells/"hats" even after falling which makes them much harder to eat for creatures without nimble fingers. Native species which depend on acorns to survive the winter, like squirrels and various birds, don't like them and therefore don't eat them. Meaning there are more American acorns left over after winter, allowing them to spread even faster, outcompeting the tree which is an important part of the forest ecosystem
@@MalcolmPL Damn, I didn't even know they were toxic, I assumed native animals ignored American acorns because they're smaller, harder and "new" in the ecosystem so animals would rather continue their staple diet of bigger, soft-shelled European acorns. Even more reason to hate your Yankee oaks! ;)
One thing with the roots strangling themselves out, this can occur with many trees if soil is put right around the base of the tree (potting soil, mulch etc.) as it causes roots to shoot out around that area to get the nutrients from what it thinks is the ground level. I recall this being explained on a "This Old House" video or something where they recommended if you wanted to mulch to dig down around the tree so the level would be the same before applying woodchips or whatever, since otherwise you could unknowingly strangle the tree constantly adding more and more on top of it.
'mossy earth' is a rewild-ing reforestation non profit. They have a UA-cam. Perhaps you might collaborate with them to start a new project in your area. To replace invasive trees with sugar maple and others!!!!????
American chestnut was once a common tree, important to the ecosystem and for the human population, it provided a lot of food and its lumber was strong and rot resistant. In the late 1800s a fungal disease was brought over from Japan with some imported nuts. The blight spread quickly and had about a 95% fatality rate. This would have been bad enough in and of itself, but 5% survival is still a fair few trees and the species would have eventually bounced back after a century or so. The problem was that the farmers saw that most of their trees were dying and so cut them all down so as not to waste any lumber. This brought the species to the brink of extinction. Only about two hundred trees across the whole of the continent were spared the axe. These were all isolated from one another so natural regeneration was impossible. Over the last sixty or more years people have been working to restore the species, carrying pollen between those few isolated ancient surviving trees in the hopes of breeding a new blight resistant strain. They have had partial success so far and have planted their resistant seedlings in a number of places experimentally, but it will still be another decade or so before the project is complete and they can start distributing their seedlings more broadly and restoring the ecosystem. Other efforts have also been made to bring the chestnut back, such as cross breeding with Japanese chestnut or through genetic engineering, but those projects have major issues.
The question is why isn't Sugar maple imported in Scandinavia, Siberia etc? It may be slower to grow but it provides a quite good food source once established. Which is more important than good firewood I guess.
@@MalcolmPL It's not so risky since they not really fast growing trees. And after all they are large trees that store a lot of carbon into their wood etc. "Apex climate tree" if you wish. And if you know how to use foreign plants they become a resource that for both men and animals.Even buck-thorn so dreaded in America can be used to produce the best charcoal.
@@AggelosKyriou I get what you're saying, but complex systems behave in complex and often unpredictable ways. Buckthorn is also a really bad example of what you're talking about. It's extremely competitive and dominates the forest floor, and because it produces berries after only a year of growth you really need to stay on top of any efforts to get rid of it. Worse, because the berries are eaten by a couple species of birds, the plants can colonize far afield. A forest near where I live is almost impassible for buckthorn and no matter how many of them I cut down there are always more the next year. It is the definitive invasive species. Lilac would be a better example of a foreign species integrating, it provides cover for animals and nectar for bees and doesn't outcompete the native species.
@@MalcolmPL The way to control buckthorn is controlled burning and burying the burnt shrub under soil and stones to form a small mound of earth which will gradually lose volume all the while suppressing the stumps from resprouting. My father did it in our property in Greece and hasn't seem them resprout for years. It would be better if you didn't have any buckthorn over there but if there was enough demand for charcoal the plants would be controlled by the voracious demands of the charcoal burners.
You just can’t tell what is going to become invasive before they escape. Some species can be fine for years before something changes and they get the right conditions for true invasive behavior. Better/safer just not to plant non-natives. Have you read Doug Tallamy’s books? If you are interested in native species, invasive plants, and their ecosystem effects, they are amazing. They completely changed the way I see the world around me. Thank you for the videos!
Norway maple makes good fire wood. And spliting norway maple is easy. Manitoba maple is another junkie tree grows sideways and breaks easy. I need fire wood my tree guy brings me norway maple 🤣
@@georgiabigfoot Never having been to washington park, I can't answer that. It could be that the trees are far enough from a drainage route. My sugar bush out in the country is riddled with them, despite their never having been planted on my property, and despite my cutting every one I can find. What happens is that the keys from a planted norway somewhere up the road fall into the ditch and get washed along into other people's property. Or else they fall in the road and get blown into the weeds or the forest down the way where it borders the road. After a decade or so the trees start producing keys, which then spread deeper into the forest.
@@MalcolmPL having beautiful norways with yellow foliage everywhere sounds like a “problem” I want to get signed up for given the mass development in our part of Georgia where builders have been given the green light to bulldoze entire forests to build million dollar homes sitting on a 1/8 of acre with a single lousy Bradford pear planted in the front yard.
you have to stop spreading misinformation about these trees. norway maples are beautiful trees and they dont reproduce nearly as quickly as red maple and silver maple
Them: Who radicalized you?
Me: The Norway Maple
I’m in northern New Brunswick (growing zone 4a). We have very few elms left in my town. There are just a few. Though there are Norway maples and green ash trees that were likely replacements of elms, I’ve noticed in the last few decades the most commonly planted municipal tree is Japanese tree lilac. It’s pretty bland. I’d rather see any native species such as sugar maple, beech, oak, ash, (thornless) black locust, white/yellow birch… but these require more maintenance.
Yellow birch is an underrated tree, beautiful and if you chew on a twig it tastes like wintergreen
They didn't only decide on the norway maple to replace american elm. In fact, the main tree they picked as a replacement was Silver maple, because it had a similar shape. Silver maple seemed like a good option at first but it turned out to be a pain in the ass. It's somewhat brittle, handles pruning very poorly (rot making limbs break off) and has a shallow root system. They solved this problem by hybridizing Red and silver maple called "freeman maple" which is a common choice today.
But yes Norway maple was one of the choices as a replacement.
No idea why I was recommended this video since I'm not canadian and the Norway maple is a beloved native species in my country, but I really appreciate your message. Always plant native, nature knows best.
Finally, someone from Norway maples native range.
I would love to see photos of this species growing in its natural environment and on European parkways.
Since as an arborist here in the states. Searching for info outside US is near impossible. Thanks.
norway maple trees are wonderful. i have 3 of them on my property and the work well with all the other trees on my property including other maples. this video is mostly misnformation
@@scottcarlini954 you can find thousands of photos on inaturalist
@@scottcarlini954You can find basically pure stands of Norway maple around the Russian city of Samara along the Volga river. It looks like a sugar maple forest. Beautiful thick broad leaf forest.
@@cantwealljustgetalong2It's not misinformation. They do spread rather quickly in the wild. In fact I've heard that around large cities like Boston. Norways have invaded miles of forests and it's only noticeable to the eye as a casual observer during fall because their colours change later than sugar and red maples
I love the humour and nature oriented new vids my man.
Just walked by one of these that had been torn up in last week's storm. Suddenly I'm not sad about that anymore.
Are you now, or have ever been, A Norway Maple?!!!?
I envy the density of saplings on the forest floor. Down in southern New York, the small forest my family had when we owned a proper house was half filled with garlic mustard and barberry bush under the maple and oak area, while the soil teemed with invasive earthworms. Near where the hickories grew, there was a beautiful witch hazel under-story but I don't remember seeing many saplings. That may have been a deer issue as well. Plenty of pine trees were coming up though...
This is the first time I've ever come across someone as interested in the intricacies of maples as me! :)
Find more arborist friends.
I'm in Zone 6, and we had to cut down the mature norway maple (which was a nauseating purple) which died completely in the space of two years. Every other norway maple in my area that i've seen, no matter the size or age, is either sick or stone dead. good riddance!
Your videos are really inspiring! I'm getting out on hikes more ever since discovering them and I'm being much more observant. Really appreciate the positive vibe you put out and the highly informative videos.
Bias towards not having invasive species is a good thing. Norway maples are objectively bad for the ecosystem. There’s nothing “butthurt” about wanting to protect the wilderness.
Great video! I will be checking my region to see if any grow in my area
the one thing I love about Canada how much they love their trees
They are illegal to propagate in New Hampshire.
At least on paper.
If it has sugar maple like leafs but bark like a white ash. its a Norway maple
What a useless tree. At least here in Canada. In Montréal, when the elms died they replaced them with ash trees... that are all dying now. Québec City took another approche and cared for them instead of cutting them all down like Montréal. Now it has the most beautiful and biggest elms I ever saw. But the Norway maple plague is everywhere here too. There might hope as it also brought it own parasitic fungus that is not affecting other maples. Cheers!
In all fairness, it's not completely useless, it is pretty good for burning, good calorie to growing time ratio.
@@MalcolmPL Fair point! They might be good for pollarding and being cut before mast years?
Thanks for caring about Super long lived ash. Scottie ash seed
A decade ago I spent time in Regina, Saskatchewan. I walked around the residential streets there, which had beautiful mature white elms as the street trees. What a lovely sight. The city has been taking care of those street trees for decades, I understand. I recall there was a wrapping of some kind around all of the trunks.
Norways have been doing very poorly in my town out west
Norway Maple was just listed as a weed of concern here in Washington State. They aren't as competitive in wild spaces versus our native Big Leaf Maple, but they still cause localized headaches with their aggressive roots. Keep fighting the good fight against the invaders!
norway maples are great, and dont reproduce nearly as fast as red maple and silver maple, now THOSE are weeds
@@cantwealljustgetalong2 I'm not familiar with either of those species. But here in Washington, we have three native maple species, of which are beautiful and much preferred over any species imported from elsewhere. Norway Maple in particular has no place here.
@Fingolfin_the_Warden there are lots of plants/trees that are all over the country that "dont belong here" but people brought them here, a plant doesn't walk here from overseas by itself
@@cantwealljustgetalong2 What a non-statement. Obviously people brought them here, intentionally or not, often with devastating consequences. What point are you trying to make?
Apparently, I am highly allergic to the pollen from Norway maple. Those yellow flowers cause my sinuses to swell shut, usually resulting in a sinus infection within a week. Norway maple pollen is up there with cedar, birch, oak, and hickory.
Norway maple is pollinated by insects, not by the wind, so I think the culprit is another plant
Finally someone who shares my hatred of invasive variants of native trees. Here in Europe we have a similar problem, that being the spread of the American oak which is displacing native European (summer) oaks. Like the Norway maple, the American oak grows much faster, meaning the wood is of inferior quality.
It's not just the hardness of the wood that's inferior though, the American oaks' acorn are much smaller, spikier and tend to stay in their shells/"hats" even after falling which makes them much harder to eat for creatures without nimble fingers. Native species which depend on acorns to survive the winter, like squirrels and various birds, don't like them and therefore don't eat them. Meaning there are more American acorns left over after winter, allowing them to spread even faster, outcompeting the tree which is an important part of the forest ecosystem
The american red oaks have mildly toxic and very bitter acorns, so squirrels won't eat them unless they have used up their other options.
@@MalcolmPL Damn, I didn't even know they were toxic, I assumed native animals ignored American acorns because they're smaller, harder and "new" in the ecosystem so animals would rather continue their staple diet of bigger, soft-shelled European acorns.
Even more reason to hate your Yankee oaks! ;)
@@mynamejeff3545 They've got really high tannin content.
Norway maples are also adapted to a wetter climate and shallower soils
Thank you for posting this important information! I am on a mission to eradicate those brutes!
One thing with the roots strangling themselves out, this can occur with many trees if soil is put right around the base of the tree (potting soil, mulch etc.) as it causes roots to shoot out around that area to get the nutrients from what it thinks is the ground level. I recall this being explained on a "This Old House" video or something where they recommended if you wanted to mulch to dig down around the tree so the level would be the same before applying woodchips or whatever, since otherwise you could unknowingly strangle the tree constantly adding more and more on top of it.
Educational and entertaining.
Ha! No more nefarious maples for me. You do cool stuff. I like you❤
Ah yes very interesting I say as a Texan who will never use this information in my life
You and me both mate 😂
Never say never!
I have made it my mission to rid of these habitat destroyers! And thanks for the awesome historical comments
when you start quoting Churchill's WW2 speech hahahhaha
They're a little bit like u described the wendigo. A imposter. I will fight these trees wherever I c them.
So cut down all Norway maple down all sight, will do.
ensure you are doing so safely.
Great video
In norway the sycamore is taking over the Native norway maple
Super informative
'mossy earth' is a rewild-ing reforestation non profit. They have a UA-cam. Perhaps you might collaborate with them to start a new project in your area. To replace invasive trees with sugar maple and others!!!!????
what was the deal with chestnuts
American chestnut was once a common tree, important to the ecosystem and for the human population, it provided a lot of food and its lumber was strong and rot resistant. In the late 1800s a fungal disease was brought over from Japan with some imported nuts. The blight spread quickly and had about a 95% fatality rate.
This would have been bad enough in and of itself, but 5% survival is still a fair few trees and the species would have eventually bounced back after a century or so. The problem was that the farmers saw that most of their trees were dying and so cut them all down so as not to waste any lumber. This brought the species to the brink of extinction. Only about two hundred trees across the whole of the continent were spared the axe. These were all isolated from one another so natural regeneration was impossible.
Over the last sixty or more years people have been working to restore the species, carrying pollen between those few isolated ancient surviving trees in the hopes of breeding a new blight resistant strain. They have had partial success so far and have planted their resistant seedlings in a number of places experimentally, but it will still be another decade or so before the project is complete and they can start distributing their seedlings more broadly and restoring the ecosystem.
Other efforts have also been made to bring the chestnut back, such as cross breeding with Japanese chestnut or through genetic engineering, but those projects have major issues.
The question is why isn't Sugar maple imported in Scandinavia, Siberia etc? It may be slower to grow but it provides a quite good food source once established. Which is more important than good firewood I guess.
I don’t know, but Twenty years before the first harvest is pretty discouraging.
Besides which it’s always risky to introduce foreign species.
@@MalcolmPL It's not so risky since they not really fast growing trees. And after all they are large trees that store a lot of carbon into their wood etc. "Apex climate tree" if you wish.
And if you know how to use foreign plants they become a resource that for both men and animals.Even buck-thorn so dreaded in America can be used to produce the best charcoal.
@@AggelosKyriou I get what you're saying, but complex systems behave in complex and often unpredictable ways.
Buckthorn is also a really bad example of what you're talking about. It's extremely competitive and dominates the forest floor, and because it produces berries after only a year of growth you really need to stay on top of any efforts to get rid of it.
Worse, because the berries are eaten by a couple species of birds, the plants can colonize far afield.
A forest near where I live is almost impassible for buckthorn and no matter how many of them I cut down there are always more the next year.
It is the definitive invasive species.
Lilac would be a better example of a foreign species integrating, it provides cover for animals and nectar for bees and doesn't outcompete the native species.
@@MalcolmPL The way to control buckthorn is controlled burning and burying the burnt shrub under soil and stones to form a small mound of earth which will gradually lose volume all the while suppressing the stumps from resprouting. My father did it in our property in Greece and hasn't seem them resprout for years.
It would be better if you didn't have any buckthorn over there but if there was enough demand for charcoal the plants would be controlled by the voracious demands of the charcoal burners.
You just can’t tell what is going to become invasive before they escape. Some species can be fine for years before something changes and they get the right conditions for true invasive behavior. Better/safer just not to plant non-natives. Have you read Doug Tallamy’s books? If you are interested in native species, invasive plants, and their ecosystem effects, they are amazing. They completely changed the way I see the world around me. Thank you for the videos!
420th like!
its almost dark comedy xD
Norway maple makes good fire wood. And spliting norway maple is easy. Manitoba maple is another junkie tree grows sideways and breaks easy. I need fire wood my tree guy brings me norway maple 🤣
"Junkie tree"?
People planting Norway maples in their front lawn isn’t a forest problem.
It is because they drop keys which escape into the environment.
@@MalcolmPL well why are there only 4 of them in Washington park NYC ?
@@georgiabigfoot Never having been to washington park, I can't answer that. It could be that the trees are far enough from a drainage route.
My sugar bush out in the country is riddled with them, despite their never having been planted on my property, and despite my cutting every one I can find.
What happens is that the keys from a planted norway somewhere up the road fall into the ditch and get washed along into other people's property. Or else they fall in the road and get blown into the weeds or the forest down the way where it borders the road.
After a decade or so the trees start producing keys, which then spread deeper into the forest.
@@MalcolmPL having beautiful norways with yellow foliage everywhere sounds like a “problem” I want to get signed up for given the mass development in our part of Georgia where builders have been given the green light to bulldoze entire forests to build million dollar homes sitting on a 1/8 of acre with a single lousy Bradford pear planted in the front yard.
You are presenting a false dichotomy.
There are non-invasive species which can fill the same role without the issues presented in the video.
it is wonderful for woodworking tho
You are hilarious
you have to stop spreading misinformation about these trees. norway maples are beautiful trees and they dont reproduce nearly as quickly as red maple and silver maple
How is it misinformation? Can you name something I said that is incorrect?
So the maple leaf on the Canadian flag is a Norway maple leaf and I North American Maple Leaf on the flag
No, the tips aren’t pointy enough. Also norways don’t go bright red in fall.