We went to the Cleveland Botanical Garden and found... (see picture below) Sorry John Bartram, your introduction served us well here in the US for hundreds of years, that was until we decided we did not like it anymore. To the Norway Maple, you provided us with shade and you served as a very adaptable maple for a couple hundred years. But with the invention of the internet, air-conditioning, flat screen TV’s, Facebook, and Twitter; we don’t need your shade anymore, because going outside is SO last century! You escaped the confines of suburbia and spread into our forests, pushing around our native trees like a high school bully, which if you didn't already know, we don’t tolerate bullying anymore! Then the shenanigans of you sneaking your way on to the Canadian currency was laughable! http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-s-new-20-bill-at-centre-of-maple-leaf-flap-1.1343767 YES, the Bank of Canada may deny it, but we both know what you did and that my friend is the last straw for us! Now let's make an example of you and tell everyone your a bad maple! Kind of funny how that works...
Well it's been almost a week since the birth of my tribute to the Norway maple and no responses. Is it because it's just too hard to talk about? Is it my weird sense of humor of seriousness meets sarcasm? Or is it because it's old news? What ever it is...I have yet to get a response back from anyone. I never heard back from the Cleveland botanical garden, but I am sure my email address made it to their spam folder. My friends in horticulture never responded, with the exception of one who responded back saying I never got back to him about lunch this week; which really was not the response that I was looking for... None the less, my wife gets home tonight from a long 4 day trip and I have a very nice bottle of wine, my table top fireplace, and a forecast that will be absolutely perfect for a night in the garden. I will propose a toast to the Norway Maple and I hope that maybe you will too. The North American science community may promote destroying the Norway Maple, but the memory of this tree will continue to live on in my mind.
Well, there's nothing much I can say living on a continent where Acer platanoides have grown centuries (at least) before I was born... The problem here where I live is "Quercus rubra, commonly called northern red oak or champion oak": it grows much faster than our local species. And grey (should I write gray?) squirrels too. Well, there must be a way to find room for every plant, and everyone, without the natives getting the feeling they're threatened by "invasive species" ;-)
Thanks for your response. I agree and I too grew up with this tree (actually used it's leaves for a 3rd grade art project). I feel like someone wanted to make a name for themselves when they deemed this tree invasive. Then to find the stump and sign at the botanical garden....come on...really? You have to jump on board and make an example of this living tree? To me it's like when scientist announced Pluto was no longer a planet and downgraded to a "large trans-Neptunian object". What?....Really?....Leave Pluto alone... Someone is too smart for their own good (or their ego has too much authority and influence) or maybe I just have too much time on my hands to think about these things and wonder... Why?
As an aside, Acer platanoides isn't actually native in the Orléans area, only in the east of France: [map cc-by-sa license, from wiki commons]
Treating the symptoms not the causes, is not that typical for the human species? All those invasive species zealots seem to be overlooking the most basic fact that the invasives tend to take over the land previously devastated and altered by humans, like for example, second growth forests. They conveniently for themselves refuse to see the vast and constantly growing area of monoculture lawns where the only species allowed to grow is almost always an alien to the area species of grass. Isn't the lawn grass the most invasive species of them all? There are 46.5 million acres of lawn (including golf courses) in the US alone. This is more than the area of the whole Washington State. Mowed, watered, fertilized . . . Do we really expect that we can solve our problems through hypocrisy? Or may be it is just ignorance, or may be we simply do not care?
My hunch is that since it is no longer politically correct to chase and condemn invasive human beings, bigots and zealots have taken to plants with a vengeance. This is more pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon realm (New Zealand being an extreme example). However Latin, Germanic,....countries are beginning to catch up with, for example, Belgium pondering whether to declare Acer rufinerve invasive (they have found a dozen or so spontaneous seedlings) Gomero
