I’m starting off with an easily identifiable, somewhat common coastal tree: The bigleaf maple, botanical name Acer macrophyllum. Botanical names often clue us in to an identifying characteristic of the plant at hand. In this case, macro means “large” and phyllum refers to the tree’s leaves. Therefore, we see a simple translation: Acer is always the first word in a maple's botanical name, and if you start to learn about these trees, you will become very familiar with this word.
Bigleaf maple is also known as the Oregon maple, broadleaf maple, and large-leaf maple.
The bigleaf maple is one of just three maples native to the Pacific Northwest. It dwarfs the other two, which are the vine maple and the Douglas maple: The bigleaf can grow up to 100 feet tall and 50 feet wide, with rapid growth in sapling years (5 feet per year or more) that level out to 1-2 feet per year once it reaches its juvenile stage. True to its name, bigleaf maple leaves are the largest of the maple family. These leaves are five-lobed, meaning there are five points on each classically-shaped maple leaf:
Bright, yellow-green leaves appear in spring and deepen in greenness as the season progresses. In fall, leaves transform to bright gold and then rusty brown. I was only able to take pictures of the maples in my area in mid-late November, but I’ll add photos of them in spring when the season comes around.
It is not uncommon to see many stems shooting off of one main trunk, with clusters of several small trunks in some cases.
Bigleaf maples grow all along the northwest coast and are common in riparian forests, which are forests near rivers or streams. Because of this, the bigleaf maple can tolerate some flooding, though long-term flooding (2 months or longer) will cause its roots to drown. Being that they appear in such lush areas, mosses love the deeply grooved trunks of the bigleaf, and you will often see them heavily carpeted with this greenery. More established trees often see ferns that also grow in with the mosses. This makes the trunk a nice habitat for insects, while the branches host nesting birds. Elk and deer will browse from young bigleaf maples, and once well-established, the shade of a bigleaf maple makes a good spot for salmon spawning in the rivers it often grows beside.
Before leaves appear in spring, the bigleaf maple produces yellowish-green blossoms. (I wish I had photos, but I moved into my cabin in August and only had a chance to start after the flowers fell.) These flowers serve the purpose of reproduction for the tree. The bigleaf maple is polygamous (don’t get too excited; we are talking about trees here), meaning that it produces both male and female flowers. The flowers are edible, and I’ve read that they make tasty fritter treats, which I may have to try for myself someday.
Pollinators visit the flowers 2-4 weeks after they open up. Over the spring and summer, these flowers mature into seed pods known as samaras. (I knew them simply as “little helicopters” as a child, and would toss them into the air to watch them spin down to the ground.)
Though the photo above shows the samaras separated, they grow naturally as double samaras on the tree, with the two seeds joined in the middle and wings spreading out to each side. Squirrels snack on samaras in fall and winter as other food sources begin to dwindle—in fact, I saw one eating some on my deck just last week.
This encased seed is what classifies the wood of a bigleaf maple as a hardwood as opposed to a softwood. Softwoods come from those trees which produce an unprotected seed that simply drops to the ground, such as a pinecone.
Other functions: The bigleaf maple has been referred to as “the paddle tree” by those native to the region, as its wood was/is perfect for crafting canoe paddles. The bark, which is high in calcium, was also used for ropes and for making cough medicine. And though one can technically make syrup out of bigleaf’s sap, it takes about 35 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. The sap has to be extracted from a mature tree, and from what I gather, the process is much more intensive than I’m interested in doing for syrup.
This is not a tree you can put just anywhere, due to its rapid growth and towering size. Nonetheless, the bigleaf maple is a majestic tree to have in our forests. It serves its fellow inhabitants well, providing shelter, food, shade, and—equally important to me—beauty.
For two much more comprehensive and scientific pages on acer macrophyllum, please see the following:
- Lish
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