You have one nice healthy tree there--nothing wrong at all. Sometimes when sugar maple put out their new shoots with their new leaves the tips of the shoots even droop over a bit.

--Spruce

Thanks. I'm curious to see how it turns out in my area. Caddo sugar maple is from isolated area of southwest of Oklahoma which tend to have long dry hot summers and can supposedly even grow in rocky limestone soil which I have. This particular sugar maple has been highly recommended for dallas-ft worth area if we ever wanted to grow "sugar" maple. Much tougher than those famous sugar maples from northeast of USA...

Thanks--interesting. I had not heard of this variety before. It's great you can have sugar maples there.

--Spruce

A seed strain. Fall color not much, unfortunately.

We will see. It was one of trees recommended for fall color in dallas-ft worth area.

Look for Caddo maple 'Dr John Pair' - apparently better consistent fall red color. This is a bit hard to get although I can get one from Oregon but it's pricey for 5 gallon. I found a local nursery that sells it but not available at the moment. It's hard enough finding a regular Caddo maple anyway. It's a best variant of Sugar Maple for my area that can take alkaline rocky soil, hot and dry summers... Then again there's texas native variant of sugar maple called Big Tooth maple, Acer grandidentatum. The problem is that most of them grow so slow. There might be one that is genetically fast growing but apparently, I'd have to drive way out to west texas for that. They claim around 3 feet a year.

Shantung Maple 'Fire Dragon' is probably best maple with great fall color for us not wanting to wait for it to get big. Grows fast and consistently produce red fall leaves. Best of all, it was adapted to Dallas-FT Worth area where this 'Fire Dragon' was grown from seed. I'd like to think of it as super hardy version of japanese maple that can take heat, full sun and drought. It's fabulous.

I have a big tooth. I bought it almost ten feet tall maybe 2 years ago. It has not grown much, just filled out a little. Although this year it made flowers and samaras for the first time. Fall color on mine is orange.

Tcharles26,

I hope you have provided a nice wide (5 ft) mulch around the tree! You might want to try a handful of alfalfa pellets on the ground followed by 1 inch layer of compost then aged hardwood mulch (not fresh) to provide nutrients for faster growth.

It typically takes 2-3 years for trees that size to start growing more rapidly, maybe longer if they don't get proper fertilizer (preferably organic) and mulching. my neighbor has a couple trees that size and never really grown much for 3 years because they did not provide mulch or anything. Just let bermuda grow up to trunk... Grass and tree have very different preference for type of soil biology (bacterial dominated vs fungal dominated soil) so they don't really work very well together, at least for young trees. When you have large mature tree, they provide plenty of leaves every fall to feed and keep fungi population high enough to keep trees thriving. Look at forests. That's how they are formed. Young trees need special care from us.

I have a cultivated area around the tree, mulched with bark and set out from the yard with landscaping stone. Not quite 5 feet, but close I guess.

I attribute the slow start to the fact that the tree was planted too low in the container, just a straight trunk coming out of the soil. So I traumatized it a little to expose the root flare. It looks good this year, and I expect it do well, after a wet winter, and the wettest March on record.

Last year (which was a pretty brutal summer here) some of the leaves scorched a little, but Im hoping it will do a little better this year since its more established.

RE: 'Fire dragon' maple - Agreed it's a nice tree. Keith Johansen has a few other variants under observation. including a variegated form, But I'll hold out for a dwarf becuase I dont have enough room for many more trees.

I picked up a small Shirasawanum from Metromaples that isn't widely available yet called "Moonrise". It's supposed to be a more sun and heat tolerant shirasawa maple. We'll see, The leaves look pretty thin....