Tree Talk: Striped Maple

This time on Tree Talk, we discuss a short tree with a long list of common names. Striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum), also known as moosewood, snakebark maple, goosefoot maple, and whistlewood, is a small understory specialist of the Appalachians and northern woods. It is pretty innocuous in normal conditions but like other shade-tolerant trees, if striped maple is left in the stand during a timber harvest it can rapidly outcompete desired regeneration upon receiving extra sunlight. If there is also no fire and too many deer, the result can be a dense wall of striped maple brush that holds low economic and ecological value.

Recorded on 6/6/22 in George Washington & Jefferson National Forest, Bath County Virginia, by Allyson "goosefoot" Davis.

[cammcnany]

Just started getting into trees this summer and this channel is everything I have been looking for. Great channel. Please keep up the good work!

[EmeraldForester]

I like watching this series as review for my dendrology class.

[marianwhit]

Recommended to native plant gardeners for a good small tree. Incomparable buttery yellow fall foliage. Thanks for doing this.

[shaneroper]

We have them here in upper southern Ontario Canada. I've always considered them a pest plant because I thought they were an invasive species. Now I know better. But I'll still be thinning them out to let the hard maple and oaks grow better.

[bonehaggit]

I have a beautiful striped maple in my back yard, but I've been taking down surrounding trees. How much direct sunlight can it handle?

[mrknittle]

Would striped maple make a good native landscaping tree on the north side of a house or does it only do well in the understory? Does the root structure spread like others over the Acer genus? My property is rife with silver maple, but I love the leaves and canopy of the striped maple and want to replace some of the dead/fallen saccharinums. I'm in zone 6a in NW Ohio, and I see the BONAP map shows it to be present and native.

[sandramacfie]

In the story Farmer Boy, Almanzo goes out to the woods with his father, in upstate New York, and cuts down boughs of moose wood (another name for striped maple) and taking it home, strips the bark and weaves together a whip.