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Acer platanoides

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Acer platanoides

Acer platanoides, commonly known as the Norway maple, is a species of maple native to eastern and central Europe and western Asia, from Spain east to Russia, north to southern Scandinavia and southeast to northern Iran. It was introduced to North America in the mid-1700s as a shade tree. It is a member of the family Sapindaceae.

Acer platanoides is a deciduous tree, growing to 20–30 m (65–100 ft) tall with a trunk up to 1.5 m (5 ft) in diameter, and a broad, rounded crown. The bark is grey-brown and shallowly grooved. Unlike many other maples, mature trees do not tend to develop a shaggy bark. The shoots are green at first, soon becoming pale brown. The winter buds are shiny red-brown.

The leaves are opposite, palmately lobed with five lobes, 7–14 cm (2+345+12 in) long and 8–25 cm (3+149+34 in) across; the lobes each bear one to three side teeth, and an otherwise smooth margin.[citation needed] The leaf petiole is 8–20 cm (3+147+34 in) long, and secretes a milky juice when broken. The autumn colour is usually yellow, occasionally orange-red.

The flowers are in corymbs of 15–30 together, yellow to yellow-green with five sepals and five petals 3–4 mm (18316 in) long; flowering occurs in early spring before the new leaves emerge. The fruit is a double samara with two winged seeds. the seeds are disc-shaped, strongly flattened, 10–15 mm (3858 in) across and 3 mm (18 in) thick. The wings are 3–5 cm (1+14–2 in) long, widely spread, approaching a 180° angle. It typically produces a large quantity of viable seeds.

Under ideal conditions in its native range, Norway maple may live up to 250 years, but often has a much shorter life expectancy; in North America, for example, sometimes only 60 years. Especially when used on streets, it can have insufficient space for its root network and is prone to the roots wrapping around themselves, girdling and killing the tree. In addition, their roots tend to be quite shallow and thereby they easily out-compete nearby plants for nutrient uptake. Norway maples often cause significant damage and cleanup costs for municipalities and homeowners when branches break off in storms as they do not have strong wood.

The Norway maple is a member (and is the type species) of the section Platanoidea Pax, characterised by flattened, disc-shaped seeds and the shoots and leaves containing milky sap. Other related species in this section include Acer campestre (field maple), Acer cappadocicum (Cappadocian maple), Acer lobelii (Lobel's maple), and Acer truncatum (Shandong maple). From the field maple, the Norway maple is distinguished by its larger leaves with pointed, not blunt, lobes, and from the other species by the presence of one or more teeth on all of the lobes.

It is also frequently confused with the more distantly related Acer saccharum (sugar maple). The sugar maple is easy to differentiate by clear sap in the petiole (leaf stem); Norway maple petioles have white sap.[citation needed] The tips of the points on Norway maple leaves reduce to a fine "hair", while the tips of the points on sugar maple leaves are, on close inspection, rounded. On mature trees, sugar maple bark is more shaggy, while Norway maple bark has small, often criss-crossing grooves.[citation needed] While the shape and angle of leaf lobes vary somewhat within all maple species, the leaf lobes of Norway maple tend to have a more triangular (acuminate) shape, in contrast to the more finely toothed lobes of sugar maples, that narrow towards the base. Flowering and seed production begins at ten years of age; however, large quantities of seeds are not produced until the tree is 20. The Norway maple is heterodichogamous—meaning there are both protogynous and protandrous trees (and, more rarely, duodichogamous trees)—and individual trees may change sexual expression from year to year.

The fruits of Norway maple are paired samaras with widely diverging wings, distinguishing them from those of sycamore, Acer pseudoplatanus, which are at 90 degrees to each other. Norway maple seeds are flattened, while those of sugar maple are globose.[citation needed] The sugar maple usually has a brighter orange autumn color, where the Norway maple is usually yellow, although some of the red-leaved cultivars appear more orange.

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