I have moved into a new home which has an amazing Sugar Maple in the yard. It looks to be about 40-50' tall. I noticed that it has quite a few (About a dozen or more I would guess) dead branches within the tree itself. Is this just a normal thing? Should I trim them or let them be? None of the branches are the larger ones, mostly long thin ones. But I look up the center, and way at the top there is quite a few, which is where I would think leaves should be growing. I noticed last summer a small part of the crown where most of those dead branches was somewhat empty (obviously).

The leaves also seem to be taking their time to come out this spring, it might be from the very dry winter we had.