Maybe it's a mistake for another, such as 'Fairview' (guesses based on faded labels not being unknown) or a limited introduction not yet described in print or on the web. Could be you'll have to return to the point of purchase and quiz them further.

Have you ever looked at Acer truncatum (shantung maple)? It's a much faster grower than sugar maple and is voted one of best ice and wind resistant tree. There's one called 'Fire Dragon' which should produce intense red fall color in your location (and pretty much everywhere). I've seen a picture of shantung maple and 'Caddo' sugar maple growing side by side and the growth rate difference is quite dramatic. After 5 years, shantung maple is the twice the size of 'Caddo' sugar maple and Caddo isn't a slow poke grower. It seems to be case for me so far with Bigtooth maple (Texas sugar maple) and shantung maple in my yard...

Wow, I am surprised that a faster growing maple like the 'fire Dragon' shantung would be stronger and exibit less branch failure than a slower growing saccharum maple, which is prized for being one of the most hard wood type of maple trees.

I guess I need to go back and see how much more info the Nursery owner can give me to answer my questions about this 'Firehouse' sugar maple that he sold me.

Keep in mind that 'Fire Dragon' is the name of shantung maple cultivar discovered by the owner of Metro Maples in Ft Worth, Texas for its reddest fall color by shantung maple. Yellow is the typical fall color with occasional orange-reddish but nothing like 'Fire Dragon'. Google shantung maple (or acer truncatum) in Kansas. It received high marks for ice and wind resistant there. It is designated as Texas Superstar plant as well. In Oklahoma, it was highly praised as well. I think it's called Oklahoma proven tree or something like that.

katrina1,
I don't know a thing about "Firehouse" sugar maple, but I can give you some personal experience with sugar maples on clay soils.

First I highly recommend you plant high, WAY high. Our first sugar maple was planted on a 4:1 slope (25% grade) in clay, before we realized just how "clay" our soil was. I drowned it in a fairly dry spring and with rather little watering. Due to the slope the drainage is much better than it could be, but the clay can still be a big problem (as well as a asset during dry weather, Lou can fill you in on that one). However our second and third sugar maples were planted on a mound about 4 feet wide, with the root ball approximately 1/2 above the ORIGINAL grade, with the mound composed of the native soil from elsewhere in our yard/garden area, and otherwise treated as normal (i.e. mulch), but with a close eye on water (actually and dry out very quickly). They are doing wonderfully in one of the wettest springs in a very very long time. They have endured rainfall events of 4.5 inches, 6.5 inches, 4.75 inches, 2.75 inches, 3.5 inches, and many others of from .4 to 1.5 inches, all since late Feb, and each rainfall event occurred in generally 36 hours or less. But our sugar maples seem very happy. They will require extra attention the first few years, but that's the price of planting them in clay soil.

Some people on these forum will be aghast that you are planting a sugar maple in clay soil, and act as though you are a tree killer for doing so. Don't listen to them. Sugar Maples can do perfectly well in clay soil. There are at least a dozen very large mature sugar maples that I know of within a mile of where I'm sitting now, all in the same/very similar clay. I know native wild sugar maples growing within a few miles, that I have seen for myself growing out of the same thick stuff. Not a few trees..... but hillsides covered with them, and certainly a impressive sight in fall color. Lastly, they grow around the great lakes in clay soil perfectly happily. With that said, smaller is easier than bigger to transplant into clay, with the ideal being they grow up in the clay from the start. But a GREAT MANY doing wonderfully in my area in all soil types.

Lastly, we also have a "Fire Dragon" Shantung that the MetroMaples brought us when he happened to be coming to our area. A exceptionally tough tree, that is also doing great for us. It survived 21 degrees and ice fog one morning in April with 6+ inch long soft succulent shoots that had unfurling leaves with NO protection at all. NO DAMAGE!!! NADA!!! NONE!!! Not from the 21 degrees, or the 25 degree the next morning, or the upper 20's a couple weeks after that. It also turned a orangey-red for us last fall shortly after we got the tree. Fire Dragon is certainly on my recommend list.

JMHO
Arktrees

Arktrees, that is interesting, I had no idea that maple trees will suffocate so easily in clay soils. All over town there are maple trees growing in clay soil. Of course I have destested those fast growing weak trees so much that I never took the time to notice if any of them were sugar maples.

Out of all the big tree maples, is it just the sugar maple cultivars which have such a difficult time adjusting, after being transplanted into clay soils?

I asked the nursery owner if I needed to wait until the 'Firehouse' sugar maple goes dormant in the fall before planting the tree. He said no, plant it now.

This potted tree is fully leafed out with a very dense canopy that casts a heavy shade under itself.

I told the nursery owner that I normally removed at least 50% of the potting soil when planting trees in clay soil.

He told me not to do that for this tree; but to instead, just make four deep slits around the radius of the rootball, and to plant the tree 1/2 inch high. He also added that the first soil dug out of the hole is the first soil which needs to go back into the planting hole, and that we should end up with packing the heaviest clay soil, we encounter when digging out the bottom of the planting hole, to make a crust of soil which covers the surface area of the 1/2 inch high raised rootball. He said that if we do that, water would runoff the clay crust we created and not as easily over saturate the rootball. Then the tree could easily send out roots to seek water at the rate it needs.

This is the first time I have heard of using this technique.

Can any one else comment on this way I just learned of how to plant this potted sugar maple, when it has already so fully broken dormancy?

katrina1, I don't know about the planting that the nursery suggested, I can only state what has worked for us to this point, and is apparently working well. And we did make the cuts he suggested. I'll have to be very diligent about keeping enough water in the dry months for the first couple of years. As far as planting now, I would say absolutely plant now. I planted one of our this time of the year (maybe even later) after drowning the first one. Just remember it's a whole lot HARDER to over water in this part of the country in July, than it is in Feb/March/April or October/November even in wet clay soil. But you have a fine line to walk over the summer between too wet and too dry. I water the one that was planted this time of year every 2-3 days with 1-2 gallon jugs of water with small drip holes placed directly on top of the rootball ONLY. Most of the water is coming from the rootball the first couple months, so you really only want to water it while new roots grow into the wetter surrounding soil (but don't let it get too dry either, just treat them separately). The tree did get some leaf tip burn when it got the upper 90's and then low 100's, but before that heat was over, I was cutting back on water, and before that heat ended, it was being water with the sprinkler along with the grass weekly, and really nothing else. Enough roots had grown in the very warm ground to support the tree. By fall I was taking to additional care, and there was no more leaf burn. Today it is densely leafed and looking great, but still getting fully established. So I say plant it now, but it will be TLC, but allot of the comes with the clay anyway.

Lastly, sugar maples can not tolerate excessively wet soils, however many other maples don't care so much. Just depend on the species and cultivar. I personally don't buy the weak wood/ fast growing tree ideal. Depends on the tree Tulip trees grow EXTREMELY fast, but have very few problems. The hated Silver maple is not nearly so bad as many make it out to be. I know ALLOT of 60-100+ year old Silver maples that have no problems and are great shade trees. While I'm sure someone is jumping to their keyboard to scream "short-lived" at the 60-100+ years, well I can only say that there are very of you that will be here in 60 years. I know allot of people who LOVE them as problem free trees. However if they start to get rot, or develop other real problems, then take them down. Many fast growing trees do have big problems, but such blanket statements are lacking.

Putting subsoil on top of the roots or in upper part of planting hole is bass-ackwards. New findings as time has gone by have tended to put us back with emulating the natural situation the tree evolved for instead of trying to do something clevuh. You can only depart from the limitations imposed by nature so far. A tree really won't take an unsuitable site, if it just can't handle the type of soil that is there it must be excavated and replaced or covered by better soil (berming or mounding), with the tree going into that instead.

As stated previously, in this case Sugar Maple are/can be perfectly happy in clay. They are perfectly happy natively in my area, in clay, without any artificial care competing with Oaks, hickories etc. They grow by the hundreds to thousands. They will not survive in water, or flooded soil/environment, nor in a dessert. However sugar maples can/do perform well in clay. It's not the ideal, but almost no plants/animals/people EVER live in an ideal environment whether natural or man-made. Man is not adapted to dessert life, or even the temperate zones, but man lives perfectly well in these areas all over the world. If you only planted what was ideally suited to your environment, then you would have almost or even nothing. Not even natives to your area.

Late yesterday afternoon my Daughter's DH planted the tree as per the instruction that I listed were given to me by the nursery owner.

Now my daughter thinks the tree looks like it needs to be raised some due to her neighbor's fairly new trees seeming to be planted in a little higher beds.

Some reports I have seen mention that maple trees should not be planted very high due to them tending to grow more surface level roots which over time thicken and becomes easly damaged by lawn mower blades once those roots extent farther out than just under the tree's canopy.

I have not seen the tree yet, but when I go look at it, if I can still see where the root flare is growing out of the trunk, and if the bed her DH formed for the tree appears to have been done correctly, right now I am thinking to advise them against raising the tree any more.

Does my reasoning seem right, or should I be advising them differently, even if I find that every thing else about how the tree has been planted appears correct?

There are many kinds of clay-like soils, I have no idea if the site in question is suitable for sugar maples or not. That wasn't my point. My point was that if somebody else thinks it is not suitable for sugar maples one of those or any other kind of tree can't be forced to grow in an unsuitable soil. The site will have to be modified to accommodate its limitations or the tree will not do well, even die.

Trees like non-dwarf forms of sugar maple grow quite large and - if successful on the new site - will soon exceed the parameters of any small-scale efforts like tinkering with the planting hole.

Placing fine-textured, poorly aerated subsoil onto the top of a rootball is like scratching the surface of a record or CD.

Hum, Wonder what the nursery owner was thinking then when he advised to create a water resistant heavy clay surface at the very top of a tree's potting soil encased roots which is planted in an other wise adequately aerated and fairly effective enough moisture, draining planting bed.

I also am still looking for an answer to my question concerning the consequences of planting a maple tree in a foot high raised planting bed, expecially once the tree has been there so long that the surface type roots have grown beyond its canopy dripline and enlarged enough to be at risk of lawn mower damage.

As I said, some will claim you are a tree killer for planting a sugar maple in unholy clay no matter the evidence your present them, they just ignore it. Like growing by the thousands in the local heavy clay to a very large size. The the mound is only to help get them established, so they don't sit in a basically a bucket of water, while the roots then find the right level for their roots to grow in, same as if it is loam. The mound is 8-10 inches tall, and the tree trunk will end up a couple feet across and will far surpass the size of the mound. The roots will grow naturally at the proper level. They will find the same level in the soil no matter how they are planted to begin with. IF the right depth is one foot, then they will grow to one foot depth. If they start 6 inches above that, then they will grow down to one foot. They will not grow at 6 inches instead of 12 inches. If you look closely at many larger established trees, there will be evidence of them being planted on a mound, but the scale of the mound is such a small fraction in comparison to the overall size of the tree, it's not noticed unless you look for it. As far as whether it really is heavy clay or something similar to clay but not really clay.

Take a look here.

ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/NSSC/Soil_Taxonomy/maps.pdf

for a nation wide soils map.

The local soils are of the order Ultisol which are ancient heavy clays. This also includes far Northeast Oklahoma which katrina1 has said in other posts is the area of her location.

For information of Ultisols look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultisol

And more specifically at my location the specific Ultisols that the thousands of large mature natural and planted sugar maples which are no evidence that sugar maples can be planted in clay and do well in real clay are "Ck-7" and "Jo-4".

But alas, to some it matter not. Some soils/environments sugar maples will not survive, or at least not prosper. Some will require some special attention at the start, as transplanting is not a natural process, and is akin of having open heart surgery, therefore special care is only reasonable. Some clays may not be suitable. However to imply that your site is unsuitable simply because it is clay is ridiculous and unfounded. All the thousands I see around me must simply be a dream. What a beautiful dream it is.

katrina1 do whatever you want. I was simply trying to make you aware of what has been successful for me and it a recommended method (BTW this method originated from the Minnesota extension service I think, it's been too long since looking it up). Just google "planting trees in clay soils" to find similar instructions. It works, and is recommended, and that's all the evidence I need.

If it grows off the mound into the rest of the soil and over a large area then that means the soil really was suitable for it. Otherwise it wouldn't grow off the mound. So then maybe all the mound is doing is elevating the crown above the water table, where that might be a factor.

Out at the tips of the roots the tree is the same as a small delicate herbaceous plant. If the soil isn't of a type the kind of tree can handle, it won't root into it.

Guess time will tell, if the sloped yard provides enough down flow, for the water table to not be too high where the tree is now trying to establish.

At least my daughter's DH did not plant it at the bottom of the slope.

If they find that their Firehouse sugar maple cannot survive, I will once again suggest they replace it with three trunked 'Heritage' bich tree. If they planted one of those lower on the slope, there would be room in their yard to plant a smaller ormamental tree higher in the yard at about 15 - 20 feet from the front of their house.

That was my first suggestion to them, but her DH vetoed the birch tree, probably because he does not realize that the next door neighbor's four trunked Birch tree that he dislikes does not have the same appearance of the 3 trunked one we would purchase.