Field maple

Family

Aceraceae

Habit

Tree

Height

15 m

Spread

10 m

Growth

very fast

Lifespan

200 years

First yield

after 10 years

Hardiness

zone 4–7

Shade tolerance

partial shade

Soil

Sand, Silt, Loam, Clay

Soil moisture

semi-dry – very wet

pH

5.6 – 7.6

Times apply to the northern hemisphere in a temperate climate and shift with altitude and cultivar.

Edible: The sap contains sugar and can either be consumed as a beverage or boiled down to syrup by evaporating the water. The sugar concentration is significantly lower than that of the sugar maple (Acer saccharum). The syrup is used as a sweetener for many foods. The trunk is tapped in early spring, since the sap flows best on warm, sunny days after the last frost. The best sap yield is achieved in regions with cold winters and a continental climate.

Medicinal: Little evidence exists for any medicinal use of field maple. Tradition records the dried bark as an astringent and a decoction of it as a wash for irritated eyes — a use named in older herbals for several maple species and for which there is no proof of effect. The sap drawn in spring was boiled down to syrup as with sugar maple and regarded as a strengthening drink. The species has no independent medicinal significance today.

Other uses: The leaves are placed around apples, root vegetables etc. to preserve them. The fast-growing plant tolerates cutting well and is excellent as a formal hedge. It can also be used as part of a naturalistic hedge, where it is only cut every three to four years. It is also used in topiary. The wood is fine-grained, tough, elastic, hard to split, takes a good polish and is rarely attacked by insects. The trees are seldom large enough to yield much usable timber, but when available it is highly valued by joiners. It is also used for cups, bowls etc. The root wood is often knotty and is valued for small joinery work. The wood is an excellent fuel. Charcoal made from the wood is a good fuel.

Site: Field maple is the least complicated native tree for a garden — it takes almost any soil, though it prefers calcareous loam in a warm position, endures drought, compaction and urban conditions, and will keep growing in half-shade at a pinch. As a specimen it reaches ten to fifteen metres, but it can be held at any height you like, which makes it the classic hedging plant. One thing to plan for: it carries heavy aphid populations in summer, and the sticky honeydew coats everything beneath it — do not set it over a terrace, seating area or parking space. Its seed germinates willingly, so plenty of seedlings come up nearby. The roots run shallow and compete with perennial beds immediately around it. It is harmless to fruit plantings, carrying neither fireblight nor plum pox. Care: Field maple takes cutting better than any other tree we have and resprouts even from several-year-old leafless wood — a hedge is cut twice a year, in June and late summer, while a specimen needs nothing at all. Sap rises in February and March, so prune later than that. Young plants need browsing protection against deer and a vole basket; do not fertilise. Tar spot, which puts large black blotches on the leaves in late summer, looks dramatic and does no harm. The one condition to take seriously is verticillium wilt: individual branches wilt while in full leaf, and cut wood shows brown rings. Take affected branches well back into sound wood, disinfect tools, and do not replant a maple in the same spot. Soot bark disease, which afflicts sycamore, has so far barely touched field maple.

The winged fruits ripen in September and October; in field maple the two wings sit almost horizontally, which distinguishes it from Norway maple and sycamore. The seed has double dormancy and, sown conventionally, often lies until the second spring. The proven trick is green harvesting: take the fruits as soon as they are fully formed but not yet dried out and sow immediately, and they will germinate in late winter, because the germination inhibitors have not yet built up. Seed taken too early, by contrast, yields only weak plants or none. Seed kept dry is soaked for 24 hours and then stratified for two to four months at one to eight degrees. Move the young seedlings on singly and grow them to at least twenty centimetres before they go to their final position. Vegetatively, field maple can be layered, which takes about twelve months; in a hedge it renews itself constantly from the stool in any case.

Field maple carries a remarkable amount for its size. Its foliage feeds the caterpillars of some 47 moth and butterfly species, ten of them confined to maples, along with roughly six beetle species tied to it. Fifteen wild bee species use it, one of them exclusively. Its inconspicuous yellow-green flowers open in May together with the new leaves and are notably nectar-rich — for honeybees, bumblebees and hoverflies this is one of the productive flows of early summer, while the pollen yield stays low. Fifteen bird species take seed and insects from it. Its greatest contribution, though, is as a hedging plant: because it regrows dense and tangled even after hard cutting, field maple hedges and hedgebanks supply the sheltered nest sites that red-backed shrike, yellowhammer, whitethroat and dunnock can no longer find in open farmland. Trees allowed to grow old add cavities and deadwood.

Special features: the only native maple with corky ridges on young shoots; the most cut-tolerant of our native trees → classic hedging and hedgebank plant, resprouts even from old wood; German Tree of the Year 2015; wings of the fruit set almost horizontally (distinguishes it from Norway maple+sycamore); leaf stalks carry milky sap; so far barely affected by soot bark disease (unlike sycamore); heavy aphid populations → sticky honeydew; brilliant golden-yellow autumn colour; shade-tolerant, persists for decades in the understorey;

Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa. Field maple ranges from southern England and southern Sweden across the whole of central and southern Europe to Spain, eastwards through Ukraine and the Caucasus into Asia Minor and northern Iran; it has isolated stands in the Atlas mountains of North Africa. It is the most warmth-loving of the three native maples and is therefore absent from northern Scandinavia and from high mountain country, rarely exceeding 800 to 1,000 metres. In central Europe it is among the commonest woody plants of the farmed landscape; in North America it is locally naturalised as a garden escape.

Field maple is the tree of the woodland edge and the field hedge. Its natural stronghold is warmth-loving oak-hornbeam forest and hardwood floodplain woodland, where it grows as a medium-sized tree in the second canopy layer; it tolerates shade better than the other native maples and persists in the understorey for decades until a gap opens. It prefers base-rich, often calcareous loams and clays in summer-warm positions, but endures summer drought, periodic flooding and compacted ground alike. Its real domain in the cultural landscape is the hedgebank, the field boundary and the laid hedge, where it has taken regular cutting back for centuries.