I'm doing maple flowers this year. I'm collecting these to try to identify some trees that had me confused last year, so I'm really hoping people who add to this thread will just post photos with IDs. These trees came with tags, of a sort. The Vancouver Parks Board decided one year to provide concrete identification of some of the maples it planted. So here's Acer Rubrum 'Autumn Blaze', male flowers. The Parks Board has taken to leaving the tags on the new plantings; this is Acer Rubrum 'Bowhall', female flowers. I'm pretty sure this is what's listed on the Parks Board's inventory of trees as just Acer Rubrum, no cultivar given, female flowers.
Autumn Blaze is a registered trademark used to sell the Freeman maple cultivar 'Jeffersred'. The correct botanical name for this one is Acer X freemanii 'Jeffersred'. Technically Autumn Blaze is a marketing device and not a tree, plus since the tree is a Freeman maple and not a red maple the only word that it was completely proper to include on the plaque was maple!
Thanks, Ron. That's really useful to know that it's not just red maples that are coming into bloom now. I read somewhere that silver maples should be out before red maples, but I thought everything I was seeing were the A. rubrum. Well, you've said before that the Freemans are half red maple (and half silver).
On GardenWeb there was a recent thread where reports of which species was blooming before the other differed regionally.
