Island of trees: Mountain maple on the mountain, of course

You will find this mountain maple 10 metres to the right of  Chief, the enormous cottonwood poplar on Olmsted Road, in Mount Royal Park, not far to the left of the top of the staircase that runs alongside the parking lot of the Royal Victoria Hospital. You will recognize this bush maple by its 3-lobed leaf and the yellow-green tassles of disamaras. Illustrations: Charles L'Heureux

This is a live broadcast. I am sitting on a park bench across Olmsted Road from the second of the giant cottonwoods – second, that is, if you’ve come up the path from Park Avenue. Or, it’s the first if you’re descending the road having come down the Peel Street steps from the lookout. Look for it on your left at roughly five minutes walk from the foot of the steps.

It’s 4:30 and I can hear the cars pulling out of the Royal Victoria Hospital parking lot down below. I call this cottonwood Chief as he signals hello with his right arm to all that pass. He could just as well be a she but I don’t recall ever seeing the cotton-clad seeds flying from the branches so far extended towards the sun.

No doubt, there was another arm many years ago but not in the 30 years I have known this tree. But I’m not here to write about Chief, but merely to use this spectacular tree to locate a tree that is equally spectacular – at least during spring and late summer/fall -but far more discreet: the mountain maple.

Once you’re sitting on one of these two benches, in the shade of two fine sugar maples, look 10 metres to the right of Chief and you’ll see what look like greenish yellow flowers hanging in tassles from a small tree. Walk toward it and you’ll see that the flowers are, in fact, fruit: disamaras, or keys, hanging in clusters of as many as 20. The fruit has, no doubt, told you that this tree is a maple, as no other genus of tree has a double samara.

The leaf too spells maple. Three lobes, like the red maple and the black but not easily mistaken for either tree because of the rounded bottom of the irregularly toothed leaf and the very shallow lobes. Besides, the mountain maple, is more bush than maple. While it may reach heights of 10 metres, it is always multi-trunked.

The only other species of maple you might confuse with the mountain maple is the striped maple, also known as moosewood. A small understory tree with equally rounded and shallowly lobed three-point leaves, the striped maple stands out both for its striped, pale blue on green, bark and for the size of its leaves, which are easily the biggest of any local maple.

Walking along Olmsted Road, there’s little chance of confusing these two smallest of our native maples as I’ve yet to see a striped maple in the park. You will, however, see plenty of other plant species with maple-like leaves. In fact, just to the left of today’s tree is a patch of purple-flowering raspberry, also known as thimbleberry, Rubus odoratus, (for the berry’s ability to fit over your thumb without breaking apart), angling its maple-shaped leaves upward to catch some last rays of sun.

If you continue along the road until reaching the foot of the Peel Street stairs, leading up to the Kondiaronk Belvedere, you’ll find a spectacular self-seeded and self-managed rock garden, including two other non-maple species of plant with maple like leaves. Once again, you’ll find, Rubus odoratus, the purple flowering raspberry, some of which still sport a few of their rose-scented purple flowers, as well as highbush cranberry, known in French and in Algonquin as pimbina, after which a sector of Mount Tremblant Park is named.

The latter, whose Latin name, Verbena trifolia, or three-lobed viburnum, has leaves quite similar to the mountain maple. Like all members of the verbina genus, the leaves are opposite, just like all in the maple genus. The bright red berries, tart but edible, much like the cranberry, however, clearly distinguish the pimbina from the mountain maple. Both of these bushes have lovely flowers which makes them interesting as ornamental species in small gardens or to fill a small space in a big garden. In fact the Latin name of the mountain maple, Acer spicatum, refers to the spike shape of the white blossoms which appear after the leaves have opened.

I invite you to spend a few minutes in both sectors I’ve described along Olmsted Road. You’ll recognize the large, bright green, horse hoof-shaped leaves of coltsfoot, the first flower of spring. At the foot of the big staircase, you may also recognize jewel weed, a native impatience, growing tall in blue-green leaves and sporting small and bright, orange-speckled, pitcher-shaped flowers.

A last word about location. I made an error last week when describing the location of several black maple trees. In my centralist Montreal vision, I saw the river as the north branch of the St. Lawrence when, of course, the proper name is la Rivière des Prairies. My apologies if I caused any confusion.