 We're going to talk about maples now. Maples are very popular plants and landscapes. And tonight we're going to learn about which maple species and cultivars grow best for us in North Dakota. We're going to learn this from Todd West, Dr. Todd West. He's a horticulture professor at North Dakota State University. And he's a director of our woody plant improvement program. Todd earned his PhD from Southern Illinois. The North Dakota State University woody plant improvement program focuses on the development of new woody cultivars that are suited for the USDA Hardiness Owns 3 and 4, which is what we have in North Dakota. This program has been very impressive. It's released 60 ornamental woody plants to the nursery industry, and many of them are the hardest selections of that species available. Very impressive. So Todd, welcome to the forums. One of the big problems we have with maples, well, three problems is that they're generally shallow rooted, limited drought tolerance. We have to deal with that, which, you know, droughts a big thing here in North Dakota often. They're also sensitive to high soil pH causing chlorosis. Again, another big problem that we have across North Dakota with our high pH soils. And they're often thin barked, especially when they're young and susceptible to the winter sunscall and mechanical damage. So we want to be able to protect them from that. Here's a picture showing that winter sunscall. And you see this a lot on maples, so they haven't been protected. They get that really direct sun exposure during the winter, which then with that thin bark, it allows them that water to become active. Then as soon as the sun goes down, you know, because we have those nice bright sunny days in winter, then as soon as that sun goes down, we get that flash freeze, which then causes this problem. And then we get the, the cambial tissue dies, then the bark comes off and we end up with a very not slightly looking tree, but it also then has other issues because you have all that exposed tissue. Then we also have our soil induced chlorosis, typical that we see with red, silver and freemen maples. And you can see with this picture, this is from Aaron Bergdahl, but you can see our nice golden maples that are in our landscape. And we have quite a few of those in many communities. Here's just two pictures inside that were taken in Fargo on the left hand side is a red maple and on the left is a freemen maple. And you can see the color comparison on that right with that freemen maple in the foreground. That's a cork tree. And then I believe behind it is a hybrid elm. And so you can see how that species, that maple is so susceptible to chlorosis. Now, we're very fortunate here in North Dakota and we just heard from Dr. Joe's Lesnick, but we have this wonderful publication because we do get asked quite often, what do I do with my tree that is yellowing? And a lot of times it will be a maple. So if you search for the NDSU Extension Bulletin F1868, you will get this wonderful publication that's titled Iron Chlorosis in Trees talks about the trees that are susceptible, which maple are on this list. And then what you can do to remediate it? How can you help your tree come out of that or at least manage it? So some solutions to those three things, mulch to protect from mowers and string trimmers and aids in maintaining our soil moisture. So always mulch your trees to choose species or cultivars adapted to the conditions at the growing site. And that's what we're going to be talking about today is looking at what species of maple and some cultivars that can get us on the right foot. Then proper sitting of landscape plants, minimize winter sun exposure, proper siding on trunk or protect with wraps during the winter months. So you have those trunk protectors that can be put on. It's a great help for that young, thin bark. So here on the left, you can see that mower and string damage. We see this a lot on trees that are growing directly in turf. You know, this maybe is not the best mulching here on the right, but at least it's mulch. And as Tom had mentioned, you know, we do pretty extensive maple evaluations out at the NDSU Research Arboretum located near Absaraka, North Dakota. Here you can see a nice fall day with the coloration coming in. One maple trial that we have done is these hybrid maple evaluations and you're starting to see them for sale in garden centers now. And this is where we have the Japanese maple, which is the palmatum by the Korean maple, the pseudocyboleanum. And we're they're trying to get that Japanese maple look into a hardy tree. And this is from Isley Nursery is one of the main players. They have this jack frost collection. And they have several plants that are in this collection. There's Arctic Jade, there's Ice Dragon, and then there's North Wind. Now, we've tried these plants numerous times now in protected locations and exposed locations, multiple sites around Fargo, out at Absaraka. And we found that the Ice Dragon and the Arctic Jade are just not hardy. They can't even go through a standard winter. Now, North Wind was doing really well, but it wasn't until finally the winter of 2018 to 2019. It did it in. And so it just absolutely wiped it out. I was really excited about the Ice Dragon. I was hoping that one would make it here is North Wind planted by our greenhouses. You can see where it got the sunscald. This tree is completely dead all the way down to where there was a little bit of snow line and you can see that one little leaflet coming out. Well, it finally did die in 2018 to the 2019. With that Ice Dragon, I tried it in my own backyard. And so you can see there on the left, it died all the way back to snow line. And so what I decided to do is dig it up and turn it to a bonsai plant. So that's really not what we want to do with our landscape trees. So some species that we are going to be familiar with is Tatarian maple. This one's a nice utility friendly tree. It also can be a multi stem, but generally it's going to be found as a single stem at the garden center. I do have this red kind of warning at the bottom is that this is not native. And it does tend to be weedy and has potential invasiveness. So it's on it's on the eye of people watching it for invasiveness. But it's been selected for the form, the red samaras. And that that's really one of its major ornamental traits. There are these red fruits and you'll get this during the summer. And again, that's why it also tends to be invasive because it's quite prolific. But that's your ornamental feature. Tatarian maple also has higher pH tolerance. We don't see the chlorosis on Tatarian maple. And there are several cultivars to choose from. Pattern perfect is one. Ventura, probably the one most people are familiar with is hot wings and then also rugged charm. And here's just some different forms. You can kind of see what they would look like in your landscape. On the left is the Tatarian maple standards, 25 foot by 20 foot. Hot wings is that top right. You can see that it's wider than it is tall, whereas rugged charm is much narrower, more upright. And so you really can pick then the form along with that ornamental component because they all will have that really nice, attractive red fruit. So here are some pictures out at the arboretum. Hot wings there on the left, rugged charm on the right. You know, they look fairly similar in these pictures. They're not extremely old and developed yet. They do have that thin bark for quite a long time. Tatarian maples, they'll range in their fall colors from yellows to orange to muted reds. Now, a very closely related species is the Amer maple. And this is the acer Tataricum subspecies genala. Or sometimes you'll see it as just acer genala. This is also not native and it also can be invasive. Generally, you'll see it, you know, it can be multi stemmed, but nurseries often will train it as a single stem. So here you can see there's a nice planting in Fargo alongside, I think this is a park or an entryway to a neighborhood, but a really nice planting of them. So very similar to what we see with the Tatarian maple. And here this is the fall coloring in that reds to kind of that muted kind of brick red. Here's a picture on one in a boulevard in Bismarck. Now, this picture doesn't show, but there's there's actually no utilities above hand or above this boulevard. But this would be a great utility friendly tree. It does produce this kind of cluster of a creamy, kind of whitish yellow flower. And so and then again, it will also produce that fruit. Several of the cultivars flame ruby slippers. Again, selecting for that bright red fruit. And so we have ruby slippers, red wing, embers, campfire, royal crown, flame, red November. And you kind of get the theme there of what they're going for. And again, it's all about that nice, beautiful red fruit that shows up in the summer months. Campfire produces a really, really nice deep red, red November also. So you'll get those red fruits in the summer, but then you also get a nice red fall color as well. So you get kind of that double, double duty with the red. Silver maple, pretty common tree. It can also have a pH issues with our chlorosis. Also is not tolerant really of salt. So you've got to be careful of that. But otherwise, it's generally a really nice adaptable tree. Can handle flood, can handle drought. I personally love the bark. It has that nice kind of plady peely bark, which is quite nice. But it generally will end up being a fairly large tree. And here you can see where it's been planted, really not in a really ideal, maybe location. Seed source is very important, making sure that we focus on northern selections. You often see silver maples that will hold their leaves for a very long time. And some of that is that more of a southern selection. It just doesn't shut down in time. And there's quite a few cultivars, Silver Queen, Blair, McKay's Seedless, Silver Cloud, Northline. And then there's the city atom types. They're the cut leaf forms. There's BB, Weary Eye, my favorite is Skinner's Cut Leaf. Silver Cloud is probably one of the best that was developed up in Canada, so it's extremely hardy. Here again, just showing you some overall size and kind of shapes. Here's Blair, then on the left, Silver Queen in that kind of middle right. Here's Silver Cloud and McKay Seedless. You know, McKay Seedless is a male selection, so you won't get all of that messy fruit. Here are the cut leaf types. And so you get a much deeper, in-sized leaf, so you get a finer texture. And often the cut leaf forms are more upright as well. And that's why I like Skinner, because it's not so broad, that's typical of a silver maple, but it has that nice cut leaf, but also upright form. Also, it has that nice peely bark. This is a Skinner's that's located out at the research arboretum, just really nice form, great ornamental aspects, but it can also have problems with chlorosis. Beautiful fall color, typically get a nice golden. Just to give you an idea, so Silver Cloud was starting to color October 1st, whereas BB, as you can see in the picture on the right, in the background there, starting to really color in October 10th, whereas Skinner is just barely starting. So that's where that Silver Cloud is a really good choice if you're looking for a silver maple, because it shuts down much earlier than the other silver maples. And again, because it was selected up in Canada, it's a much Northern selection, and that's what we really want. Plants that shut down early generally are hardier for us, and so that's what we really try to focus on. Oh, and by the way, did I mention mulch? Yes, mulch, mulch, mulch. Always give your trees mulch. Red maple. So red maple is native, not native to North Dakota, but one of the big problems is that it's not generally adapted to North Dakota because of our Hawaii SOA pH. This has a major of chlorosis issue. So you may have to do some type of amending so that you can either prevent or mediate that chlorosis. Also, again, when they're young, they have a thin bark, so you need to protect that from winter sunscald. Now, from our evaluations out at Absoraka, the research arboretum, we found three cultivars that seem to do really well with our high pH. Our pH out at the research arboretum is anywhere from about 7.8 to 8.2. And the three that we really like out there is Northwood, Autumn Spire, and Red Point. Here is a picture of Autumn Spire. So you can see the nice red fall color that it's developing. But if you must try a red maple, make sure again, focus on those northern origins so that they will shut down on time. So Northwood is a native Minnesota selection, 45 by 35. You know, all red maples are gonna do extremely well in that more neutral to slightly acidic soil. But again, we've seen that this one has performed well in a high pH soil and it also has shown to have less sunscald issues than other red maple cultivars. So here's the fall color developing. It's not, you know, and again, it depends on year by year of how well and how amazing the fall color is gonna be. Autumn Spire, this is also a native Minnesota origin, also has shown to have less sunscald and chlorosis issues, 50 foot by 25 foot, beautiful, beautiful tree. And then also Red Point. Now Red Point's been listed as zone five, but it's performing extremely well. And we get down, you know, into a zone three on a bad year out at Absaraka, and this one's been just doing extremely well. Also shown to have less sunscald and chlorosis issues as compared to all the other red maple cultivars. So we've talked about silver maple, we talked about red maple, now we're gonna bring the two together. So we have the Acer X freemanii, which is the Freeman maple. It's a hybrid between silver and red. And it's taking the two main characteristics of the growing fast of the silver and the fall color of the red and bringing them together. And so cultivars that you typically see will be Autumn Blaze, Sienna Glen, Autumn Fantasy, Firefall. Now this year, here in Fargo, the city of Fargo is no longer allowing Autumn Blaze or Sienna Glen to be planted on boulevards. So that has been removed from their approved list. And again, because of adaptability issues, but also with the chlorosis issues. Autumn Blaze is by far the most common of the Freeman maples, 50 foot by 40 foot. Sienna Glen, it was a Minnesota origin, 50 foot by 35 foot, but both you can definitely see chlorosis issues on. Autumn Fantasy, this is October 21st, back in 2013. You can see the color it gets as compared to the other maples in the background. Just a really, really nice color. Firefall, Freeman maple. This is one that's been doing extremely well out at the Arboretum. University of Minnesota release, it's a cross between BB and Autumn Spire. So it has more of a cut leaf and it's early October coloring gives it a dependable fall color, but also a nice shutdown time as well. And just to show you its consistency. So these are the trees. If you ever come out to the Research Arboretum, they're just inside the main gate off to the right-hand side. And here you can see a separation by two years, October 5th and October 4th. The color is spot on. Sugar maple. We have another native maple here for us. And again, we wanna focus on that northern sugar maple origins that upper Midwest seed is the best for us because it will shut down on time, can tolerate soil pH levels into the mid-sevens, hard, strong wood structure, generally turn yellow to orange fall color. Some cultivars turn orange red. So you do have to select appropriately for the color that you are desiring. The Cicitin Hills, Cicaholo, Northeast, South Dakota, Northwest extension of sugar maple native range is the superior adaptation to Northern Plains conditions. So there's been several cultivars that have come out of this Cicitin Hills, Cicaholo area. And one of them is an NDSU release as well. The main cultivars that are doing really well in our area, Green Mountain, Fall Fiesta, Northern Flare, and Unity. Here you can see again the shape of what you would normally see with the sugar maple on the left. And then on the right, just to give you an idea then of how the cultivars differ when it comes to their form. So Fall Fiesta tends to be a little bit more of a broadly ovate, whereas Green Mountain is more of an oval. But Fall Fiesta has performed beautifully. This is available through Bailey Nursery. Again, nice mid-October. You can see the nice color that's developing on it. Northern Flare sugar maple. This is Autocicitin. This is an NDSU release. Very adaptable. The pH also tends to be also more leaf tatter resistant. So the leaf really holds up well. And a nice consistent kind of that orangey, yellow, you know, not a very deep red by any means. It's in that more orange red color. Unity sugar maple. Super hardy selection out of Manitoba, 40 foot by 30 foot. And then some additional maple species that you wanna be starting to look at. They're not as commonly found in the trade. A couple more than the others, but just add some more diversity as Joe was talking about. That's the importance we wanna diversify. Not only within the species, but also obviously across genera. And here today, you know, I'm only talking about one genera. But my be maple, acer my be, my be I. This is Morton out of the Morton Arboretum. Beautiful tree, hardy zone 3B. It's not native, 45 by 30 foot. Super urban tolerant. So pH and drought tolerant. Also moderately salt tolerant as well. So this is one that is being planted quite a bit and doing very well. It's kind of classified into the Norway range. It's not really that group, but it has a Norway kind of look to it. The leaves are that deeper kind of green. They look as if a Norway leaf, you've kind of sanded the edges. When you take the leaf off and squeeze the petiole, you'll have a melky sap just like Norway. It also turns a golden fall color just like Norway and just really, really beautiful tree. It also has very unique looking bark. I don't have a picture of showing up of a close up of the bark, but it has kind of a almost a corky ridged sort of bark to it. And this is where then the selections, further selections have come in. Now there's rugged ridge and this was selected more for the bark characteristic than anything else. So it has a deeply furrowed corky bark. And so it just adds that extra little seasonal component for us, once it loses its leaves, it adds that character to it all through any season. Three flower maple, we can't do Japanese maples, we can't do paper bark maples, but we have these substitutes and three flower maple is a substitute. Right now you can only find it as a seedling source. It's almost impossible to propagate it clonally. And that's how a lot of the maples then, well, all the maples are pretty much cloned either by grafting, typically. And this one just doesn't behave well, but it's a beautiful, beautiful tree. The leaves are pubescent. It's a trifoliate leaf. It's a compound leaf with three leaflets and it has beautiful exfoliating bark, not as beautiful as paper bark maple. But then you get into a range of an orange to an orange-red fall color. And the leaves also will stay on the entire winter season. So you end up with a really nice deciduous kind of a screen and just absolutely beautiful. Now they won't stay this color, I wish they would stay this color all winter, but they will turn kind of a tannish brown, but they'll persist. Then there's manchurian maple. Manchurian maple is also a trifoliate maple. It has beautiful fall color. This one's much more difficult to find, but we have it on campus, we have it out at our arboretum and doing extremely well. I'm a big fan of manchurian maple. Manchurian snake bark maple, acer tegmentosum. If you wanna see a great example of this, we got several on the NDSU campus now. You really do have to protect them from the winter sun, because they don't really ever develop a very thick bark at all. So it's best to plant them where the sun will be low and they'll get that winter shade. And then in the summer, when the sun is high, they'll get that nice sunlight. Otherwise you're gonna have some bark issues. We've also had some bark issues on campus from the squirrels nibbling on the bark, but squirrels nibble on a lot of different trees. But you get this white and green striped bark and the leaves can be quite large. They're very unique. I don't think I have a close-up of the leaf here. No, I don't. But it's quite the conversation starter. When it comes to a tree, people will look at it and go, what is that? And it's like, oh, it's a maple. Like, no, it's not. And then once you get up to it and you start showing them all the ID features and you're like, oh yeah, it is a maple, but it's pretty funky. But great, great little tree. It's not gonna be extremely big. Then we have our Korean maples, the Acer pseudocybillianum. This is our Japanese maple substitute. So we have the Acer trifloorum as a substitute for a paper bark maple, Acer grissium. Here we have the Japanese maple substitute. And by far the Hardiest is Northern Spotlight is the NDSC release. It was commercially available for quite a while. And then unfortunately the nursery that was producing it was Isley Nursery. And then they came out with those Jack Frost series hybrids. And so they dropped ours from producing and so now it's no longer available. We have a couple of nurseries that are evaluating so hopefully we'll come back here soon, but this has survived down to minus 40. Whereas even the seed sources of Korean maple that are available from Baileys are hit and miss. And as we already talked about, the hybrids are real hit and miss. This one gets a beautiful orange to red fall color and very consistent. So here you can see what fall color you'll get and you can train this as a multi-stem or a single stem. What we're doing though is that we're taking then also the Japanese maples and we're crossing this into our Korean. We actually have a Korean by Japanese maple hybrid. It's called Northern Glow. And that one for us is marginal hardy as well. And that's another one of these hybrids but we're taking it and crossing it with our Korean and we're making these selections similar to what Isley did with their Jack Frost series. So hopefully we'll end up with one that will be extremely hardy for us that will have more of the foliar traits of a Japanese maple, but the hardiness of the Korean. If you want any more information on what we do and with these presentations also, you can visit us online. I've got several links here. You can also reach out to me via email. Also my research specialist, Connor Heggemeier as well. So thank you for your time. Hey, thank you, Todd. That was really beautiful. Hey, speaking of beauty, one of the, we have a question that somebody wants to, your PowerPoint, what can we do about this? We do archive all the presentations on the Springfriar Fever website, but what if someone's interested in your photos? They should contact you personally or? What I can do is I can put them on our website. And then. It's spectacular. And I don't know if I can just send that to you and you can send it out or I don't know how best to advertise that. But if you go under the NDSU, Woody Plant or NDSU Plant Sciences, Research, Woody Plants, there are some of these presentations, other presentations already available for download. So I can put that there. Okay. So we'll talk about that later. How about you talked a lot about mulch, Todd, do you have a recommendation, recommendations of best type of mulch for trees? You know, I'm a big fan of just, you know, bark mulch. You know, any mulch is good mulch for the most part. I mean, obviously we see a lot of rock mulch because of our wind, but it's just something that we can, you know, suppress the weed growth. We want to, in the turf, we really want to keep that soil nice and moist and cool, but also we want to keep people away from the trunks of the trees with the mowers and the string tremors. So any mulch is good mulch. The more the better. Not volcanoed. Okay, right. How about, how come you didn't mention Norway maple tonight? You know, I thought about that after I had this all together and just there are some Norway maples that we can do. I don't know why I skipped that. That's a very good question. Okay. Can people go to Ebseraka to view the trees? We do have generally the first Wednesday in August is our annual field day. I think this year it's going to be the second Wednesday in August because there's conflict. And so that's an open house from 4 to 6 p.m. Generally we don't have the ability for people just to come out and just wander around because our research facility, not a public arboretum, we don't have onsite staff, et cetera. So we're all busy doing something. I do encourage if you are a member of like a garden club or something like that or some type of service organization or something that we can get multiple people out at one time, then we're more willing to give tours. But individuals, it's just very difficult. You mentioned about how you have a lot of these interesting trees at the NDSU campus. Is there like a map available where someone can wander and look or are these trees have signs on them at all? No, I mean, currently they don't. That's something I've been working on for several years and we hope too soon. We are making a map and we are making labels. So hopefully in the very near future you can get online and use your phone and walk our campus and get a really cool tree tour. How about this person's neighbor has a purple leaf maple tree or burgundy leaf tree in the summertime? Do you know what kind of tree that is? Most likely that's gonna be your Norway maple that I didn't talk about. Do you have a favorite purple leaf Norway maple variety? What's the one? It's I'm brain farting right now. Is it Deborah? Do you like that one? Deborah's one, Deborah does really well. And then there's one other one, but Deborah's kind of the standard for the nursery trade for our purples. But there's also another one too. And I can't think of anything. Like Crimson King or Crimson Queen? Well, Crimson King, those are old ones. That's an older one and it's not hardy, it's not. So you really wanna stay away from the Crimson King. Okay. How about do all maples allow you to pull their sap? So if you're looking to tap, obviously sugar maple is the main go to, but silver maple you definitely can as well. People make syrup from silver maples. I've never tapped a Freeman maple, but I guess in theory you could. But the highest sugar content obviously is gonna be coming out of that sugar. You don't wanna tap a Norway because it's gonna be a milky gross sap that you don't wanna make anything out of. Okay. About among the maples, which is most, let's see, they say pH resistant, but what's most tolerant of extreme pH? Extreme pH, I would say the Tatarian maple. Okay. It's extremely adaptable and doesn't have really much of the issues. Also what we're seeing, Norway, obviously it doesn't have any issues so much with that either. And then the Miami maple, and that's why it's becoming more popular because you don't have those chlorosis issues that you see with the silver, with the red, with the Freeman, and sometimes with the sugar. Is there a silver maple that's more tolerant of alkaline soils? It's a big problem out here in the West. Yeah. I really like silver cloud. It seems to do better. Again, because I think where it was selected up I think it was selected in Manitoba. It is similar kind of pHs that we see as well. So I think that one tends to be a more pH tolerant than the other cultivars. Getting back to your brain fart on purple leaf maples. Was it a Shwedler maple? Shwedler? That's another old one. Yeah. That's not the one I was thinking about. Okay. Just trying to help you out here, Ty. I appreciate the help. We've got a big audience. A lot of knowledge out there. What's the hardiest red leaf maple? Summertime red leaf maple though. So that's, we're back to those purple leaf Norway maples. Yeah. So that's gotta be Deborah or the one you can't remember. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. How about this person put in a Norway maple cup year, a couple of years ago, it's already losing sap and the bark is splitting apart. What would you do about it? Can you save it? Trash it, start all over. Well. A couple of years ago, just a couple of years ago. Just a couple. Just planted it two years ago. Oh yeah. I mean it. Pull the plug. Yeah, I would pull the plug. I agree with you, Tom. Pull the plug. And next time, wrap it for the winter. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the key is getting those wraps on the trunk when they're young. Pull them off during the summer and then get them right back on, you know, in the fall. And it will protect it from browsing, from animals, but then also from that winter sun. This person has a red blaze maple. You ever heard of that? Red blaze maple. I don't know what that is. Okay, I don't know either. How about. Autumn blaze is sold under a lot of different names that people kind of mess them up. So. Yeah. I've been in the yard for 22 and a half years. So maybe I would have to be one of the first autumn blazes. How about, let's forget about it. How about the barren box elder, the box elder tree, you know, a classic, our native North Dakota maple. Right. Don't talk about that. Come on. No, I know. I apologize for that too. I mean, it was kind of like what Joe said. I mean, 20 minutes. Come on. We can't talk about everything, but yeah, I agree. You know, the box elders, every plant has, you know, right plant, right place. And box elders really have a great place. They actually do really well. I mean, they're not, you know, they're not an extremely long-lived tree, but they can do really well in the right spot. And the box elder bugs and nice fall color. Is that what you're trying to say to the home? Is that right? I don't know about that, but. Okay. How about, you know, that variety barren, which is, that's an all male one, right? So it has less attraction to box elder bugs. Is that available? I guess just Google it, huh? Yeah, you'd have to look. I'm not sure what the availability on that is. Okay. Would you ever consider growing a maple tree using the seeds from the tree? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. The only problem is you just don't know what you're going to get. Okay. If it's crossing out, but I mean, that's how we get new trees. That's how we get all the new cultivars is we're going to be planting seedlings out. So go for it. Okay. Again, this, another FOP about the barren variety. They say that it was recently released from Canada. Yeah. Is that right? Okay, okay. Well, if it's recent, if it's from Canada, maybe Jeffrey's nursery would be the place to look if he had to make a guess. That would be my guess. A lot of maple syrup lovers here, they recommend box elder, tastes like a cross between maple and sorghum. Oh, that sounds yummy. Got three gallons of syrup in Valley City. There you go. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's all in that same kind of group. Silver, box elder and the sugar. Yeah, definitely. You could tap those and away you go. I don't, as a tree lover, I just think poking holes in trees unnecessarily is not the way to go, but that's everybody's got their own love. Is there a special way to tell the age of a maple tree? I mean, you can, with any tree, you go back and find the terminal bud scale scars and you could count back from those if you know what you're looking for. Obviously, most maples are fairly fast growing, so it doesn't take long for them to get a good size, but you could kind of count back from there and get an estimate. Most people, when we estimate, you're kind of like, oh yeah, it's so big, it's about that age. How about when's the best time to plant a maple tree? Best time to plant a maple tree. I'm a big fan of fall planting. Oh, are you? When it comes to trees. It's not obviously too late and not when it's 90 degrees either, but when you do that fall planting, you get the nice root growth and the plants shutting down, it's not putting its effort into flowering and everything else, it's putting its growth into the root system, but obviously, most of the time, you're not gonna find many trees in the fall available. We're at the mercy of the nurseries and the garden centers, so you get one when you get one. That's right, Dale Herman taught me that the best time to plant a tree is yesterday. Yeah, that's exactly right. Plant it yesterday, especially in oak. Get them going. How about can maples tolerate deer damage? Well, when they're young, no tree is really immune because they have that thin bark and that's where the protection comes in. If you're in a high deer populated area, you may even have to do some extra protection, especially if they're doing any of the buck rubbing. They can really do a lot of damage to a tree, no matter what type of tree it is. Okay, Todd, you mentioned about the importance of wrapping maples to protect against the winter injury. How long do you have to keep doing that? I would do it, well, I mean, really, yeah, it depends on the species. If you're looking at like that snake bark maple, or the Manchu Striped, that you want to do quite... Forever. But yeah, pretty much almost forever, but I'd say three to five years. And once you start getting that thicker, a little bit thicker bark, the problem is that people, they'll wrap it and they'll never take it off. And then the tree is kind of growing out of it and that's too long, but take it off during the growing season because those wraps, those plastic tube wraps, they create a little microenvironment. So insects and fungus and everything else loves to be in there and you can get bark rot from that. And so take them off, but then just put them right back on, and eventually it won't fit anymore and that's a good time not to put it on. Have you ever heard of a Princeton gold maple? Princeton gold. I've heard of a Princeton gold ginkgo. Right, or a century, yeah. Yeah, me too, I never heard it, but maybe it's a sugar maple. Oh yeah, Princeton gold. It's a Norway. Norway maple, there you go. I would be worried about that because Princeton is kind of the oldest nursery in the US who was in the Northeast and they always don't tend to be quite hearty for us, but maybe. Well, it's already planted, so we'll see. They can report to you after five years. Yeah, these report to me because I don't think I have one. Gertens is saying it's hearty to four B, so yeah, it should be. Okay, what's the fastest growing maple in North Dakota? Fastest growing maple you're looking at either your silver maple or your box elder. How about, how come you didn't mention Acer, Nubin, N-U-B-I-N, N-U-B-I-N. Because there's no such thing, maybe. Because I've never heard of it. Okay, that's a good answer. I guess educated on that one. Okay, we can look that up later. Okay, I think we've got, let's see. Would you take off the tree wraps right now with their mild winter? Yeah, oh yeah, definitely take them off now. Okay, okay, there you go. Todd, thank you. All right, well thank you. And on time, we just saw those beautiful maples and we learned a lot, really appreciate it. Thank you.