Scientific Name
Acer x freemannii ‘Autumn Blaze’
The autumn blaze maple is a hybrid between silver maple (Acer saccharinum) and red maple (Acer rubrum). Several breeds of this cross, the Freeman maple, have been introduced, the most widely known being ‘Autumn Blaze,’ developed in the late 1960s. The popularity of these hybrid breeds arises from the fast growth rate contributed by the silver maple and the stronger wood and brilliant red orange fall color contributed by the red maple. An interesting aspect of the fall color on these trees is that often one portion of the canopy will reach peak fall color or maximum brilliance while the rest of the foliage remains green and turns color later.
These trees have reasonable drought tolerance and can attain a height of 50 feet or more. The leaves are intermediate in shape between the two parent species. As with red maple, the young bark is thin, light gray and smooth, which lends it in some cases to frost cracking injury on the southwest side of the trunk during radical temperature fluctuations in Denver’s winter climate. In recent years there has been some concern that this tree has been too popular, coming to comprise too high a percentage of the urban forest, as happened with silver maple, and that its wood may not be as strong as anticipated. This has led some towns or cities to limit its planting on public land and to give other tree species greater preference.
It's also worth pointing out that highly successful breeds such as this one, while offering control over landscape design by guaranteeing desirable traits, are the opposite of genetic diversity in the urban forest since they are grafted clones which means they are genetically identical. A population made up of such clones is potentially more vulnerable to a disease or other environmental challenge than a population with the random genetics that result from sexual reproduction in nature.