Acer saccharinum silver maple

Silver maple, Mayfield Avenue. Sairus Patel, 8 Dec 2022

Acer saccharinum leaves. From Trees of Stanford and Environs, by Ronald Bracewell

A maple no longer widely planted because of its brittle wood, though fast-growing and best known today as a parent of the popular Freeman maple hybrid. The leaves have five lobes, the central one typically slightly wider at the midpoint than at the base – unlike red maple, where it’s broader toward the base. The leaf outline seems almost drawn with straight lines, lending a certain severe beauty to the deeply cut lobes. Silvery leaf undersides give the tree its common name; saccharinum means “sugary,” referring to the sweet sap.

Older trees develop a broad, vase-shaped crown and fissured bark verging on the shaggy, for example the massive, sprawling specimen at 733 Mayfield Avenue, on the left. A smaller tree, upright and symmetrical, stands in the median of Page Mill Road just south of Deer Creek Road, at the crest of the hill before Page Mill swoops down toward the Highway 280 entrance. Another sprouts from a stump at the southwest corner of Lasuen Street and Museum Way. Former campus specimens include one on the right at 579 Alvarado; a heavily pruned companion still remains in the backyard, visible from Lane C.

In Palo Alto, silver maple can be seen as a street tree at 890 California Avenue, in the southeastern section of Peers Park, and behind the fence along the Wellesley Street side of 790 College Avenue.