How Far Apart to Plant Autumn Blaze Maple Trees
Autumn Blaze maple (Acer freemanii Jeffsred) has spectacular fall color. The brilliantly red fall foliage made it a widely planted landscape tree. Its tolerance for poor soils, waterlogged soils and drought has made it a landscape staple. Does this Spark an idea?
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Hybrid
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Autumn Blaze is a hybrid cross of red (A. rubrum) and silver (A. saccharinum) maple, according to Dr. Charles Brun of Washington State University's Clark County Extension website.
Height and Spread
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Standard maples like Autumn Blaze are large trees when mature. Autumn Blaze is a large tree, growing up to 60 feet high and 40 feet wide. It has a rapid growth rate, growing up to 3 feet or more per year, according to commercial growers at Wimbish Tree Farm.
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Canopy Spread
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Take the canopy spread of your tree into account when planting. When figuring how apart to plant Autumn Blaze, take into account the canopy of the mature tree. Since the canopy is 40 feet in a healthy tree, spacing has to allow for the two trees side by side without intergrown branches.
Trunk to Trunk Distance
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Space your maple trunks far enough apart so the mature canopies barely touch. Space Autumn Blaze landscape trees 40 feet apart trunk to trunk, either side by side or diagonally if in groups. This allows for the distance from the trunk to the edge of the canopy (20 feet) of each tree when mature.
Hardwood Grove
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Maples grown for hardwood can be closely spaced, then thinned. Closer spacing is needed if using Autumn Blaze in a hardwood plantation. An 8x10 allowance is recommended by the Iowa State University's Extension forester, Paul Wray, on the school's website. Closer spacing "requires earlier thinning."
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit acer image by Igor Baryshev from Fotolia.com Autumn in a village. image by Vladimir Khaptinskiy from Fotolia.com maple and tall grass image by Andrew Kazmierski from Fotolia.com maple image by cherry from Fotolia.com maples image by Vladimir Karpenko from Fotolia.com
