The Best Southern Maples for Fall Color

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Trips to New England in the fall must be delightful – you get to wear a sweater in September, lobsters are plentiful and inexpensive, the woodlands are ablaze with color. The sugar maples that are native to that part of the word, Acer saccharum, not only give us maple syrup but reliably develop the red anthocyanin pigments as the rainfall and temperatures in those northern areas are usually just right for that process to occur. But down in the warmer southeast, our native maples, Red maple, Acer rubrum, are inconsistent in developing those glorious leaves. On a recent Making It Grow, our panelists Davis Sanders and Paul Thompson told us that there are southern maples, Acer leucoderme, chalk maple, and Acer saccharum variety floridum, Florida maple, that can survive our hot summers and are known for having fall color almost every year.