Do Not Plant! No, No, No!

Norway maples in North America

Norway maples (Acer platanoides) are big, fast-growing trees native to, you guessed it, Norway and some other parts of Europe and Western Asia, where a variety of insects will eat its foliage, including the Norway Maple aphid (Periphyllus lyropictus) and the Asian longhorn beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis). European and Asian insects that eat this tree’s foliage have adapted, over thousands of years, to the milky sap its foliage contains. North American insects have not, and do not eat its foliage. Although I’ve read online that squirrels will eat the samaras—the winged seeds of this maple—I have not seen this happening in my yard. Certainly, the many squirrels who make their home here have not made even a tiny dent in the vast numbers of samaras that fall and sprout in my yard.

Norway maples are invasive.

A handful of Norway maple seedlings weeded from just a few square feet of my back yard.

First introduced in the U.S. in the 18th century, they have been widely planted since then as a street tree and shade tree because its dense leaf canopy and golden fall color. Unfortunately, it has aspirations to create Norway maple forests wherever it stands. My neighbor has two Norway maples along the fence line that overhang my back yard and drop massive numbers of seeds. The newly sprouted seedlings are not hard to pull—it’s just that there are so many of them, it’s an exceptionally tedious spring job, as well as being more-or-less impossible to get them all.

Five Norway maple sprouts in a few square inches of my back yard. They are thicker in some places, thinner in others, but this is about the average number I find in my garden beds.

Second-year seedlings are harder to pull, but manageable. Older seedlings are difficult to get out—and I regularly find them hiding under shrubs and fences and in odd corners of the yard. You can still find Norway maples for sale at less responsible nurseries. Don’t buy them!

Oops! I missed some several years running in this garden bed.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad being out in the yard today. The weather was fine, tiny insects were coming out of their winter hidey-holes, and the apple trees were forming flower buds.

An apple bud, just on the verge of flowering

Do you, too, have a plague of Norway maple seedlings coming up in your garden beds? Have you found a solution? Or would you like to vent? Leave a comment!