Nelson Henderson said “the true meaning of life is to plant trees; under whose shade you do not expect to sit.”

In November, I always began the endless task of raking the leaves in our yard. We live next door to a Methodist church, which has two very large, old sugar maples in their front yard that begin shedding their leaves in October. In our yard, we have a large Norway maple tree that keeps its dark green leaves at least two weeks longer than most other maples.

When the Norway maple leaves finally change color they are a golden yellow and fall from the tree within days. Between these three trees, I had mountains of leaves to rake. Last year I was unable to rake the leaves, and, in the spring, the leaves were matted down, and the raking took twice the effort.

This year I have a young man mulching the leaves with his riding mower.

I could not believe how deep the piles of leaves were and decided to do some checking on maple trees and found that the average sugar maple tree has approximately 160,000 leaves. This is a lot of leaves when compared to the average apple tree, which can have between 50-100,000 leaves. However, when compared with the average oak tree that can have 700,000 leaves, I’m glad that the majestic oak tree wasn’t planted in our yard.

How do foresters figure out how many leaves are on a tree? A very rough estimate can be obtained by measuring the area beneath the crown of a tree and multiplying by four. This gives the estimated total leaf surface area of the tree in square feet. Next, estimate how many individual leaves it would take to cover one square foot. Multiply that result by the total leaf surface, which gives you an approximation of the number of leaves on that tree.

The Norway maple Accer platanoides is from Europe, where the trees are most commonly and extensively planted as street and shade trees. The Borough of Troy has quite a few Norway maple trees growing within its boundaries.

I’ve often wondered how these trees from Europe ended up in my little town of Troy. The answer came in a letter I received from Marshall Case, a native of Troy, now long deceased. He spent his whole life working in the woods and lumber mills and yards scattered throughout northern Pennsylvania.

In his letter, I read that Troy’s Norway maples were planted on the Davidson Green and Courthouse Square about 1919-20. He endowed a great gift to Troy for beautification, and at the same time the trees were planted, all utility wires in the area were placed underground or behind the businesses to improve the downtown area.

Case wrote that Troy lost much beauty when the elms died. Elmira Street had been a shady place. Upper West Main Street was planted with sugar maples before the highway took many of them. Case added that unfortunately, he had harvested many of these trees in his sawmill days and planted too few in return.

Well those plantings of Norway maple trees were a success. With the trees so widely planted, the Norway has become more familiar than many of our native maple species. The tree flourishes in a wide variety of soil and casts a very dense shade.

It is disease resistant and does quite well when exposed to the fumes and gases of heavily populated urban areas.

The tree is very productive and the seeds, which are known as “samaras” or more commonly as “keys” and to most children as helicopters, are spread by the wind and plant themselves easily. It seems that I am forever pulling out Norway maple seedlings from every nook and cranny in our yard.

Perhaps you have a maple tree in your yard and are unaware that it is a Norway maple tree. A quick check of the leaves should give you the answer. The Norway maple tree has bright green leaves, which appear as sugar maple leaves but are larger and broader overall, with extra lobes near the stems more developed.

The leaves are five lobed and can be up to seven inches wide. The petiole is often red and exudes a milky sap when broken. The fruit are always numerous, borne in pairs and widely spread three inches or more apart. Of course, the easiest method is to look at the tree when all the other trees have lost their leaves, and if most of the leaves are still green, with a few starting to turn a golden yellow, you have a Norway maple tree.

There are over 120 species of maples distributed throughout the world. About fifteen species are native to the United States, of which six are found in Pennsylvania: box elder, silver maple, black maple, striped maple, mountain maple, red maple and sugar maple.

I know there are seven trees on this list, but the book “Trees of Pennsylvania” states there are only six native maples and then lists seven species. Possibly, the reason for this is that the black maple is closely allied to the sugar maple tree, and by some authorities, it is merely a variety of the sugar maple.

The two trees are very similar in all important respects: flower, fruit, wood, and form. Lumbermen do not make a distinction, with both trees being marketed as “hard maple.”

The striped maple Accer pensylvanicum bears the distinction of a mis-spelled scientific name: Linnaeus, busily catergoring trees, in 1753 omitted one of the n’s in Penn and made the scientific name pensylvanicum; however, some books do correct Linnaeus’s spelling mistake.

Bill Bower is a retired Pennsylvania Game Commission Wildlife Officer. Read his blog and listen to his podcasts on the outdoors at www.onemaningreen.com.