By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on November 26, 2002
During her recent talk in Boerne, noted author and landscape designer Jill Nokes asked, “Why isn’t the Big-tooth Maple the tree of choice for yards in this area?”
“Its moderate scale, its outstanding fall colors and overall form make it hard to understand why the Big-tooth Maple is not the number one street tree in the Texas Hill Country,” Nokes writes in How to Grow Native Plants in Texas and the Southwest.
Big-tooth Maple (Acer grandidentatum) is native to canyons in the Edwards Plateau, including canyons on the western edge of Boerne. Among the several maples native to Texas, Bigtooth Maple is the one best able to tolerate long dry spells.
So why isn’t every neighborhood in Boerne painted with the gold, orange and red of maple foliage this month?
One reason might be availability. Only a few nurseries carried any native plants at all before 15 or 20 years ago, and few wholesalers propagated Big-tooth Maples.
Now that native trees other than live oaks and mountain laurels have gained some respectability among landscapers, Big-tooth Maples are on the market – some times. We had planned to feature the Big-tooth Maple as a NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) Plant of the Month this fall, but the local nurseries could not get them from wholesalers.
Green Cloud Nursery of Boerne usually is this area’s major wholesaler of Big-tooth Maples.
Owner Chuck Janzow said that the last good seed crops from Big-tooth Maples in this area were five years ago and then last year. The seedlings he has now will be ready to go to nurseries in the spring of 2004. If propagation from seed is uncertain, why not transplant small Big-tooth Maples from their native habitat? That’s impossible; there are virtually no Big-tooth Maple seedlings growing wild in the Hill Country.
Baxter Adams, who used to raise Big-tooth Maples on Love Creek Ranch near Medina, surveyed the native Big-tooth Maple populations of the Hill Country and of the Guadalupe Mountains.
In the Hill Country he found only large, mature Big-tooth Maples. In the canyons of the Guadalupe Mountains he documented Big-tooth Maples of every size.
The critical difference is that the deer population of the Guadalupe Mountains is kept to reasonable numbers by natural predators and the deer population of the Hill Country is ever increasing. With the overpopulation of deer in the Hill Country, maple seedlings don’t stand a chance of survival. Perhaps another reason that Bigtooth Maples were not widely used in landscaping is that they are fairly slow growing, especially compared to once-popular exotics such as Chinese Tallow and Tree of Heaven. Many people who have used Big-tooth Maples as landscape plants find that the maples hardly grow for a couple of years after they are put in the ground.
Probably that is because Bigtooth Maples tend to take time to establish a good root system before starting stem growth. The well-developed roots help them survive on the thin and rocky soils of the Hill Country canyons.
Boerne is home to several large Big-tooth Maples. This is the time of year when you hear people exclaiming about their color. But just imagine late autumn if most homeowners in Boerne 40 or 50 years ago had chosen to plant Big-tooth Maples. Today the City of Boerne would rival Lost Maples State Park!
