Silver Maple, Large Trees

Acer saccharinum: Bareroot Silver Maple Trees in Standard Sizes

The Silver Maple is a big, graceful round headed tree with a fairly short trunk that branches into a broad, spreading crown that looks best grown in the open. It has delicate five lobed leaves, more deeply cut than most maples, which are green on top with a silver-grey underside that looks great when the wind ripples through the tree. The autumn colour can change quite a bit, depending on what soil your trees are growing on, but a charming blend of oranges and yellows is most common. Like all maples, it has winged seeds.

They can reach a height of about 20-25 metres in the UK.
Browse our other Maple varieties, or all of our trees.

Delivery season: Maple trees are delivered bareroot during late autumn and winter, approximately November-March inclusive.
Choosing a size: Small trees are cheaper, easier to handle and more forgiving of less than ideal aftercare, so they are best for a big planting project. If instant impact is your priority, or if you are only buying a few plants for use in a place where it is convenient to water them well in their first year, then you may as well use bigger ones. All our bareroot trees are measured by their height in centimetres above the ground (the roots aren't measured).

Features:

• Height: 25m
• Soil: Any, best on moist or wet soil in full sun
• Oranges and yellow Autumn colour (depends on soil)
• Bareroot delivery only: November-March

Growing Silver Maples

Suitable for wet sites, it is adaptable and can establish well on dry soil with a few years of assistance while the tap root settles in. It is quite shade-tolerant and pollution resistant.
It is not suitable for exposed locations, or the coast.

It is not recommended for roadside planting, because mature trees tend to drop branches in storms.

Notes on planting Silver Maple trees:
This tree loves wet soil, especially sandy, rocky sites beside a river or lake. It is suitable for very exposed sites but it won't grow close to the coast. It is tolerant of urban pollution.
This tree is not suitable for dry, poor soil and we don't recommend it for chalk.
Silver maple has invasive roots that can attack old pipes or foundations - 40 metres is a safe distance.

Prepare your site before planting:
It is good to dig over the site where you plant a tree several months in advance. Kill the weeds first: for tough weeds like nettles, brambles and ground elder, you will usually need a weed-killer to get rid of them. When you dig the soil over, remove stones and other rubbish and mix in well rotted compost or manure down to the depth of about 2 spades.

Watch our video on how to plant a tree for full instructions.
Remember to water establishing trees during dry weather for at least a year after planting.

Tree Planting accessories:
Prepare your site for planting by killing the weeds and grass.
You can buy a tree planting pack with a wooden stake & rubber tie to support the tree and a mulch mat with pegs to protect the soil around the base of your tree from weeds and drying out.
We suggest that you use mycorrhizal "friendly fungi" on the roots of all newly planted large trees: if your soil quality is poor, we strongly recommend it.
You can also improve your soil with bonemeal organic fertiliser.

Did You Know?

This tree was brought to Britain by Sir Charles Wagner in 1725, and Linnaeus catalogued it in 1753.
The biggest specimen in the UK was almost 34 metres tall in 1982 at Willesley Drive, Westonbirt.

Standard trees are measured by their girth in centimetres 1 metre above ground level: their trunk's waist measurement. Unlike sapling trees and hedge plants, standards aren't measured by their height, which will vary quite a bit both between and within species.
So, a 6/8cm standard tree has a trunk with a circumference of 6-8cm and an 8/10 standard has a trunk 8-10cm around. This measurement makes no difference to the tree's final height.
On average, standard trees are 2-3.5 metres tall when they arrive, but we cannot tell you precisely how tall your trees will be before we deliver them.