The Mighty Maple, The Giving Tree

This is a plant that deserves reverence. Think of all it gives year-round.

In the summer it gives us shade, keeping our home cool enough we don’t need air conditioning. Those same leaves absorb enormous amounts of CO2, sunlight and soil nutrients collected through their vast root structures. This process makes more food than the trees needs so it gives back a quarter of the food to the soil microorganisms – little creatures below our feet. In return the little creatures search out nutrients that are hard to find, returning them to the roots to be taken back to the leaves. Waste from this process is what we breath. This connects sky, plants and the living soil, each giving something back to the other.

In the autumn the Mighty Maple brings great beauty in its changing leaves before they fall to earth. Having spent the summer gathering from the sky and soil these falling leaves enrich the earth with their captured carbon and unused nutrients, to be held until needed the next season. Have you ever wondered where all the leaves go from year to year, seems the forest should be choked with leaves? The soil below our feet is a very busy community, working year-round to take those leaves and make food for the coming year.

In the winter the maple gives us a renewable heat to warm our home and in late winter a delicious sweetness in syrup.

In the spring the forest is clothed with red and chartreuse maple flowers, inviting insects of many kinds to sip its sweet nectar. Its leaves unfurl after flowering, offering food for almost 300 species of caterpillar, a bird’s favorite food to feed their young. It’s no wonder the Mighty Maple becomes a banquet and a home for numerous bird species.

Maples give so many ecological services year-round asking for little in return. I bow to you Mighty Maple and thank you for all you give to this world.