Along many rivers, especially where they wind through fields and pastures, it’s easy to pick out boxelders at this time of year. Well, female boxelders, that is. Boxelder is the only member of the maple family in which male and female flowers are born on different trees, and the female trees are easily recognized in late winter and early spring by their masses of dangling tan seeds. Again, unlike the rest of its family, boxelder is the only maple that keeps its seeds for such a long time. Born in the familiar two-keyed samaras, the seeds do testify to its maple lineage.
Though not a common tree overall, boxelder is often the dominant species along watercourses and, along with willows and cottonwoods, its role is vital. These trees hold soil from the seasonal scourings that rivers inflict, buffer rivers from upland activities, provide organic matter for the aquatic food web, and supply needed shade. Trees that line rivers are endlessly fascinating to look at; their effort to simultaneously cling to the bank and lean into the water for light looks like a struggle between hope and despair.
Although boxelder is indeed a true maple, most tree books and field guides are quick to point out that it is the ‘poor relation’ of the family, unlike its stately relatives in almost every regard. The wood – of which there is little, for the tree is short-boled – is spoken of with outright contempt: it is soft, weak, and lightweight; useful, according to one book, only for “cheap furniture and easily broken toys.” In the yard, the weak, brittle branches often break and fall to the ground after storms. “It is sometimes planted for shade and ornament, but it is not a desirable tree for this purpose,” says another writer.
Sometimes called ash-leaved maple, it is also the only maple with compound leaves. Each leaf has from three to nine light green, coarsely toothed leaflets, which unfold in spring at the same time that the flowers open. The stout twigs often are purplish. Like all maples, the leaves sprout opposite from one another on the twigs.
The tree really seems to be in disgrace, if tree books are to be believed. Boxelders “generally ignore human standards for an attractive tree,” says another writer, and, indeed, this tree appears to be unable to decide which arboreal style to adopt. The straight, dense twigs splay upwards, the wide, spreading branches twist and turn, and an overall vertical position is seldom attained. Scrawny whips sprout from the trunk, and if they are removed, twice as many grow back.
Boxelder begins to bear fruit at the tender age of ten. The seeds ripen from August to October and are distributed continually until the following spring, thus ensuring that they will hit the ground in a variety of moisture and temperature conditions. And despite all its weaknesses, it is the most aggressive of the maples at establishing itself in unfavorable locations. The seeds will grow from cracks in broken sidewalks, grow on soil-less roadcuts as though nothing were wrong, and sometimes manage to plant themselves under running water.
Boxelders even have an insect that few people like, even though it is harmless. I think the boxelder bug is handsome – it’s a big blackish true bug with red markings – but it does have the habit of moving in groups into our houses in the fall, when nature’s thermostat is set way back.
Probably the hardiest maple, boxelder can withstand wind, heat, cold, and dry – as well as impoverished – soils. Though it was not widespread in New England in pre-settlement times, it can now be found everywhere. Everywhere that is not forested, that is; roadsides, streamsides, yards, and vacant lots – but rarely in the woods.
In the Great Plains states, where conditions are truly intolerable to other trees, boxelder not only survives but, like many plants when transported to a new environment, it thrives: specimens are larger, straighter, and, since shade is hard to find, much more appreciated.
Granted, it isn’t hard to be disdainful of boxelder when it’s growing in your front yard, but when seen flourishing along streambanks, you can’t help but admire its pluckiness. Mixed among the willows and cottonwoods – also considered lowlife by many – in their own disheveled way, boxelders are bravely holding streambanks, bearing prolific seed crops and generously supplying part of them to birds and mammals over many months, and carrying on in difficult situations. Come to think of it, poor relations of the human type are often the same – in some circumstances more constructive and interesting than their exalted kin.