Red Maple
Acer rubrum
A widely adaptable native shade tree with red flowers in late winter and red fall colour; a named cultivar gives the most reliable red. It grows fairly fast and takes clay and wet ground, so it makes a fine lawn or street tree. Its roots spread shallow and wide, so plant it away from paving, in slightly acid soil.
- Mature size
- 50 × 40 ft
- 15 × 12 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 2a–9b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part sun
- Water
- Medium to wet
- Blooms
- Jan–Mar
- Fall color Oct–Nov
Red Maple at its mature size
A mature Red Maple grows 40 to 60 feet tall and 30 to 50 feet wide, taller than most people.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Missouri Botanical Garden.
Through the year
What Red Maple looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Dormant · Dec–Feb
Bare: upright branches and fine reddish twigs, smooth light-gray bark.
In flower · Mar
Late winter, still leafless: every twig covered in dense clusters of tiny red flowers, a soft red haze over the bare crown.
Fruit · Apr
Small young leaves just opening among heavy clusters of red-pink winged seeds, the crown a light pinkish red.
In leaf · May–Sep
Dense medium green leaves with pale gray-green undersides.
Fall · Oct–Nov
Red to orange-red, often mixed with some yellow, bright but variable from branch to branch.
Photos
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Growing Red Maple
- Grows well in
- The Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest.
- Growth rate
- Fast
- Good for
- Specimen, rain garden, deer resistant, pollinators, fall color, winter interest, and fast growing
- Leaves
- Drops its leaves in winter
- Native to
- Eastern North America
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Red Maple, that’s about 40 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Red Maple in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other maples
Red Maple
Autumn Blaze Maple
Sugar MapleAll drawn to the same scale.