The shape of the leaf will help you somewhat in distinguishing some of these. Red maples have a trident shaped leaf:

A true red maple (not a hybrid) has variable leaf color in the wild (perhaps due to natural hybridization): I have some in my yard that are pure yellow, others have the orange/red colors.

A sugar maple has the leaf shape associated with the Canadian flag emblem (5 lobes versus 3 on the red):

The sugar maple has very orange color with some yellow. A southern sugar maple (I have found) is all yellow with no orange.

The Freeman hybrids very clearly show the Silver maple parentage in the leaf (more of a scalloped, lacy look to my eye):

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Silver maple:

Another maple is the Norway maple (not native:

esh -- Good information! Y'know, you bring up a good point. I did not know that "red" maples were naturally varied in color. I will check out the leaf shape on the one in our yard and see if I can figure it out, and will probably post some pix over the weekend too.

Just to show you some of the variability, here are some pictures from my yard. The 3 leaves on the top are from the same tree (same branch); notice the difference in both color and shape? Below that is a leaf from a different red maple tree in another part of the yard. Next to it is a leaf from my southern sugar maple.

Clearly the cultivars of red maple are a big improvement over the average tree.

Wow!
That is a fabulous lesson on maples.

The one in our backyard has these pinkish/red fuzzy blooms on it in the spring before the leaves burst out.
Then....it turns red for a few days and then a bright yellow and then brown when they hit the ground.

I'm gonna go see if I can find some pictures in my landscape history folder to show.

We were just told it was a sugar maple...but me thinks that there's more to it than that.

Dora

ok, here's what it looked like in mid Sept.

When we first purchased the home in Sept 2005, the limbs touched the ground all the way around and took up the entire back yard. We had it all trimmed from the underneath and it totally opened up the back yard. The next year, we added the enclosed mulch area for the kids to play and to separate the grass from the area where the grass would never grow.

I'm going to try and find some pics of it in the fall.

Dora, what is the shape of the leaf? The shape of it looks like a red maple, but seeing the leaf would help.

I had every intention of going out, picking up a leaf and providing a picture.......except that its been raining non stop here since 11 this morning. I don't want the pic that bad, LOL.

Perhaps tomorrow? If I remember correctly, its like the very first pictured leaf in this thread with the 3 points. The only red in these leaves is the day before they fall off. Its very short lived. Most of time they are yellow/gold.

Dora
(this is so much fun and so educational)