Most of my sugar maples are predomimatly yellow and I do NOT have acid soil in fact I have to acidify my blueberries evert year and had a pin oak with choloris that I had to drill in acid 'suppositories" ;>). Some show reds and oranges at their turning stage but become bright yellow before they drop... so maybe that is the problem if you can call it that... I love mine.... bright yellow and all. David

I am revising my other post ...my front yard sm is bright yellow and the back yard one is multi colored but still MORE yellow. they are brother and sister so to speak are about 25 ft tall were moved from a friends house a few years back at 12 ft... I have another younger unrelated 6 ft tall one thats also yellow in the front yard ... The distance between is about 150 feet so amnd the multi colored one actually is near where they dumped a bunch of concrete and coversd with dirt ( more alkiline) ... The multi colored tree is more vigorous and larger and may have a longer root system and can get the nutrients it needs for color ...so there may be hope ...or it just might be location and sun vs shade etc you didn't mention location!!! ...I'd bet in a couple years your's will be multi colored too...David

I have 3 identical sugar maples planted at the same time, in the same fashion. One gets full sun, one gets part sun and one gets mostly shade. The one in full sun has the most shades of color with yellow and orange and red. The one in the middle only has red leaves on the side facing the sun and on the other side is mostly orange and yellow and the one in the shade is yellow and orange and green currently. I don't know for a fact but the only logical conclusion I can draw here is sunlight does play a role.

Shade produces only yellow fall color leaves for me in Texas. Too much nitrogen also makes for yellow leaves.

Check out the site below-

I think that lots of environmental things impact the color of leaves. Amount of daylight- as we move into winter there is less daylight. Conditions during growing season- maybe in your area it was very wet or very dry - both could impact how soon we see color and how much color.

Here is a link that might be useful: change color

I know this is a fairly old thread, but it's right on the nose to the problem I'm having. I bought a house three years ago and the maple tree was already here so I'm not real sure as to it's variety. It has a very light colored (not white) smooth trunk about 9" dia at the base 25' tall. When talking of leaves yellowing this tree starts to turn pale green to yellow early in the summer, and the color change goes across the tree. Right now there is a line where two thirds of the tree is yellow and the last third is still pale green. Nice effect except that after the yellow the leaves start to dry out at the edges and fall off way before fall. It's looked good and healthy in the spring for the last two we've lived here. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help.
Steve