Gardening

They're excellent trees for developers because they are very fast growing and they look nice when young. However, they do have some problems:

1. Their wood is both soft and brittle, which combined with the fast growth means that you have a high risk of major damage from heavy winds. And if they are close to structures, having a big limb go can cause some nasty collateral damage.

2. Their root systems run close to the surface, which means you get a lot of roots protruding and presenting problems if you mow the area under the tree, they can pose a risk for tripping, etc. They can also heave small structures, cause problems with pipes/conduit, etc.

3. The shade they provide when fully leafed-out is fairly dense, which means that ground covers under the canopy have to be very versatile- tolerate exposure during winter and early spring, heavy shade in the summer, and a heavy carpet of leaves in fall.

4. They are free with their seeds and VERY fertile. You will find yourself rooting up plenty of baby maples in almost any area of exposed or semi-exposed soil. (They're not as bad as Norways, but they're still um, fecund.)

5. Because they leaf so densely, they produce a very high volume of large, heavy leaves in the fall, and they will not blow away/decompose on their own. They'll blow, but into drifts that will just sit there. You'll have to gather, mulch, shred, dispose, etc.

6. They don't have a terribly long life cycle- about 100 years. Which means they start reaching "senescence" (become very vulnerable to rot, disease, damage, etc.) at about 70-75 years.

That's why a lot of people call them "weed" trees. They are not, they're just temperate softwoods that evolved to live in certain ecosystems and don't really provide what we generally want from an urban or suburban "yard tree."

In 1997 we moved into a house that was built in the late 1950s, and had a big silver maple in the back yard. It had been badly cared for (at one point someone thought it would be a good idea to "top" it.... WTF??) and possibly because of that it was already senescent. After the second storm in which a major limb came down quite close to a shed we decided to take it out and replace it with a Carolina hornbeam, which was a better fit for the location.

helpfully,
Bright