I live in suburban eastern Iowa. My neighbor had a 'Fall Fiesta' sugar maple planted in her front yard earlier this year. There used to be a huge (50 ft tall x 60 ft wide), ugly locust tree in that area, but it rotted and died over the last few years. The new maple should be a beautiful tree. It just started turning orange. She already has a (45 ft x 25 ft) maple (red maple?) in the backyard, which was planted in the 1990s, that turns darkish red. The only thing I am concerned about is the size of the new tree. I didn't really want her to plant such an enormous tree in a small lot like ours. She's in her 60s so she won't be around to see it get 70 ft tall, but I might (40s). At least the new tree is north of my yard and not south. There is one thing I'm curious about. This new sugar maple was planted only about 5 ft from where the old locust tree grew. The locust tree had a huge stump and thick near-surface roots going out in all directions. The stump was ground out, but there are still spots of thick wood only a few feet from the new maple tree. I wonder how that will affect the new tree's growth.

I bought same seeds from this site. Since now, with other seeds, results are excellent. http://www.treeseedonline.com/store/p189/Sugar_Maple_%28acer_saccharum%29.html Seeds of this maple species have a deep dormancy within them, this requires a degree of patience to overcome and it is usually quite easy to get high levels of germination if the correct procedures are followed. First prepare a free draining substrate into which the seeds are to be mixed, this can be a 50/50 mixture of compost and sharp sand, or perlite, vermiculite. The chosen substrate needs to be moist (but not wet), if you can squeeze water out of it with your hand it is too wet and your seeds may drown and die. Mix the seeds into the substrate, making sure that their is enough volume of material to keep the seeds separated. Place the seed mixture into a clear plastic bag (freezer bags, especially zip-lock bags are very useful for this -provided a little gap is left in the seal for air exchange) If it is not a zip-lock type bag it needs to be loosely tied. Then write the date on the bag so that you know when the pretreatment was started. Next the seeds are required to undergo a cold period to break the dormancy, this is easily achieved by placing the bag of seeds and compost in the fridge at (4 Celsius or 39F) for around 12 weeks. It is quite possible for the seeds to germinate in the bag at these temperatures when they are ready to do so, if they do, just remove them from the bag and carefully plant them up. When the period of pre treatment has finished the seed should be ready to be planted. Small quantities can be sown in pots or seed trays filled with a good quality compost and cover them with a thin layer of compost no more than 1cm deep. For larger quantities it is easiest to sow the seeds in a well prepared seedbed outdoors once the warm and cold pretreatments have finished and wait for the seedlings to appear. It has also been found that fluctuating pretreatment temperatures can give the best germination results and I have myself had excellent results by keeping the mixed seeds in a cold shed through the winter for the cold stage of their pretreatment and allowing the temperature to fluctuate naturally. Do not expose newly sown seeds to high temperatures (above 25 Celsius). Keep the seedlings well watered and weed free. Growth in the first year is usually between 10 and 40cm depending on the time of germination and cultural techniques and developing seedlings are usually trouble free. Allow them to grow for 1 or 2 years before planting them in a permanent position.

To repeat what has been said a number of times before, there are Red Maples (Acer rubrum) in varying cultivars and then there are other cultivars of maples whose leaves turn red in the fall. There are also maples, mostly Japanese maples but other species as well, whose leaves come in red or reddish, some of whose leaves stay red and some turn green. The TRUE Red Maple is the A. rubrum, so called, as far as I know, because the flowers, which are very early before the leaves, are very red, as are the early stages of the samaras. Any other tree, if of another variety of maple (Norway, silver, etc.) MAY have the word red somewhere in its name, or have red leaves all summer or in the fall, but it will NOT BE a Red Maple, although it may be a red-colored maple, for example, the above mentioned Crimson King Norway Maple. Sorry for the lecture, but it's a pet peeve, and so you got the rant....

Timothy, Including a small recognizable object, like a penny, next to your seeds, gives a size comparison and helps to identify. I almost thought they were Acer ginnala (Amur maple) at first. But I agree they do look like Acer saccharum but remember, seeds from a grafted cultivar Sugar maple have similar looking seeds but may give you the parent rootstock tree instead of the cultivar.