Silver maples are members of the Acer genus known for colorful fall leaf .
Acer saccharinum farewell also have silvery undersurface that make them attractive as a specimen shade tree . Their downside is soft wood that cracks in high winds .
They are pop in France , a nation have a go at it for tree - delineate road . Their numbers declined after a campaign to murder roadside trees that began in the mid-1970s .
Silver Maples
Known in France as érable argenté , silver maple are fast - growing wraith tree that can top 120 feet ( 36 meters ) . Their trunk subdivision near the ground and the crown is receptive , graceful and vase - determine . Light green leaves provide dense refinement and turn yellow in the fall .
One of the early unfolding maples , the tree ’s fruit is fly with seeds fly on the wind . Silver maples live to 130 year in cockeyed bottomlands , riverbanks and riparian forests and tolerate poor land and jet-black atmosphere .
Uses in France
Tough and compromising young maple shoot are used for whip in France . silver grey maple tolerate rationalize well , so they are shaped into hedges and other geometric form . The green leaf and shoot are gathered and dried for wintertime feed for cattle .
Soft maple Sir Henry Joseph Wood is a treasure timber resource on well-disposed sites and used for cordwood in pitiable sites . silverish maples raise three feet a twelvemonth and provide a unfluctuating supply of mush , cordwood and sawtimber .
Food Source
Silver maple muggins is used to make maple syrup in France . Of the more than 200 dissimilar species in the maple family , only a few garden truck sap desirable for cook syrup .
Silver maples render seeds for birds , while chipmunk and squirrel deplete bounce buds . Wood duck and goldeneyes nest in silver maples , while beavers consume the barque and deer and rabbit the foliage . The soft wood develop cavities used by nest shuttlecock and mammals . Branches are a communal roost for red - winged blackbirds , grackles , starlings and cowbird .
Road Deaths
A symbol of France , tree - line roads are generalize in paintings , movies and prose . Henri IV in the sixteenth 100 project square roads lined with trees to furnish firewood , building materials and tad to his armies . However , the maple as well as planes and poplar tree were suspect of distract drivers and have been catch reduce down by local council since the mid-1970s .
In 2001 , many more fell dupe to a national campaign to stop route death . According to a resume by the Gallic forestry deputation , 20,000 kilometers of wayside tree ( three million trees , nearly 90 percent ) have been destroy since 1974 .
Save the Trees
Arbres et Routes is an tie for the protection of wayside trees , include silver-tongued maples . Founder Chantal Fauché has been able-bodied to save several thousand tree negociate with local council but thousands more have been cut down .
The Economist stated in 2004 that what decreased route death was stern enforcement of speed legal philosophy . There is also a campaign against intoxicated drive .
The French government has offer to replace two trees for each one swerve down to plant further back from the roadsides .
