Native maple may be made even nicer

This was great year for fall color!

The extra moisture we received in the spring, combined with the reasonable summer weather and the gradual cooling temperatures this fall made the leaves particularly vibrant.

The bigtooth maple (Acer grandidentatum), gives the best color of any tree. Most of the beautiful yellow, orange and red colorations in Utah's canyons in the early fall come from this native tree.

While the tree is native to Utah, it is not exclusive to the state. It ranges north into Alaska and south into Mexico, mostly in canyon bottoms and moist mountain sites. It also grows in drier areas, and its elevation zone is generally between 4,500 feet and 7,500 feet in north and central Utah.

The tree goes by many different names depending where it grows. These include lost maple, sabinal maple, Western sugar maple, Uvalde bigtooth maple, canyon maple, Southwestern bigtooth maple, plateau bigtooth maple and limerock maple.

Because the bigtooth maple is closely related to the sugar maple, it was a source of sugar and syrup for the early pioneers, who supposed this tree would be as valuable as the trees they had on their farms back east. But it never had the cash value of the sugar maple.

It takes 40 gallons of sugar maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. bigtooth maple sap is much less concentrated; it takes 160 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. That's why the industry never thrived here.

This bigtooth maple is a broadleaf tree with a spreading, rounded crown. Its height will average about 35 feet, and the trunk diameter averages 9 inches at maturity. Sugar maples on the other hand are about four times that size.

In spite of how spectacular these trees are collectively, there are individual trees that stand out from the rest. Some have vibrant, fiery colors; others have an excellent shape; while others hold their colors longer than the rest.

Larry Rupp, chairman of the plant soil and biometeorology department at Utah State University, thinks that the bigtooth maple — a great tree in its own right — could be even better.

"Everyone has been looking more and more at water conservation and at drought tolerance. One tree that stands out in all this work is the bigtooth maple," he said. "In addition to its water conservation interest, it is a plant that stands out because it is the right size for many smaller landscapes."