Comments on: Oh Those Sexy Red Maples

By: dryadart

dryadart — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:30:43 +0000

wow way more than I needed to know, I’m just going to stick with pretty!! But thanks – I think!!!

By: Sissy Willis

Sissy Willis — Sat, 10 May 2008 20:00:31 +0000

A fascinating, fact-filled and stunningly illustrated post! I've trackbacked to my own post of insights on Aceracean bedroom behavior, originally publisheded back on March 10, when the Silver Maple in my coastal Massachusetts yard was in full, glorious bloom: Not just another pretty face

By: sisu

sisu — Sat, 10 May 2008 19:55:38 +0000

Not just another pretty face…

Provocative, blushing female flowers of the dioecious (male and female flowers on the same plant) Silver Maple (Acer Saccharinum) — the earliest maple to bloom — that towers over our Maple Court, glowing in the morning sun, are ready for…

By: Festival of the Trees #23

Festival of the Trees #23 — Fri, 02 May 2008 02:47:42 +0000

[...] reveals the intimate secrets of Oh Those Sexy Red Maples with a hint of arboreal erotica… Did you ever think about tree [...]

By: I was wrong… « A Passion for Nature

I was wrong… « A Passion for Nature — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:29:04 +0000

[...] 21, 2008 by winterwoman I got a botany lesson today. Turns out my Sexy Red Maple post contained errors, which I will now attempt to correct. (Many thanks to my botanist friend [...]

By: winterwoman

winterwoman — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 21:38:04 +0000

Many thanks to Dave for inviting this post to the Festival of Trees. And super many thanks to cestoady for all the legwork and many new insights he added in his comment!

By: Bo

Bo — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:15:39 +0000

Fantastic photos. Now I am so ready for my maple to pop.

By: Cestoady

Cestoady — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:44:20 +0000

Technical note: Acer sexuality. After consulting with a practicing botanist who specializes in tree genetics, and spending some time with various reference tomes and Googling a bit, I have learned that the sex life of the Aceraceae or maples is very,very complex. As a result of this complexity ,there are differing interpretations of events and of course, differing terminology. So you find Andromonoecious and Androdioecious in addition to the other terms mentioned in the post.

To make a long story short, the family has species that can have flowers that are functionally male but have a vestigiial ovary == “structurally perfect”(SP) but functionally one sex or the other. So it is not too surprising that even A. rubrum can be a male one year and then a female the next,as well as other variations. It would appear that by having SP flowers ,the maples have maximum flexibility in sexual expression. So that statement in the post about SP that appears so perplexing is actually correct and not an error, as far as I can determine.

After looking into the sex life of maples, I now have a greater appreciation of maple syrup, which may be related to all this reproductive complexity — who knows ??

By: RuthieJ

RuthieJ — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:59:18 +0000

Hi Jennifer, I have some maples in my backyard, but sadly the only ones I know for sure is one Emerald Queen that was given to us as an anniversary gift one year and some Amur maples that came from the nursery. The others are transplants from Dad’s backyard. I guess I’d better do some species homework before I even start looking at flowers Thanks for this interesting post about maple flowers.

By: winterwoman

winterwoman — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:05:26 +0000

cestoady… Yeah! What you said! The source of the confusing passage was pretty reputable, I thought… the US Forest Service… I want to believe they are experts. I choose to believe that I just don’t know what all the words mean and like you said, maybe “structurally perfect” has a meaning I don’t fully understand.

Thanks!