Acer rubrumL.

red maple

WFO wfo-0000514966 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Acer rubrum, photographed by Jack Forrester
fig. a Jack Forrester, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205850201
Acer rubrum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. b Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205872206
Acer rubrum, photographed by Jamie VanBuskirk
fig. c Jamie VanBuskirk, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205323641
Acer rubrum, photographed by Pierre Cartier
fig. d Pierre Cartier, CC0 1.0 / obs. 205006174
Acer rubrum, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. e Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205337458
Acer rubrum, photographed by Mark Jones
fig. f Mark Jones, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204130251
Acer rubrum, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. g Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205867113
Acer rubrum, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. h Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203986831

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 3,333 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 3,333 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 57 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Acer carolinianum Walter
  • Acer coccineum F.Michx.
  • Acer drummondii Hook. & Arn.
  • Acer drummondii Hook. & Arn. ex Nutt.
  • Acer fulgens Dippel
  • Acer glaucum K.Koch
  • Acer glaucum Marshall
  • Acer hypoleucum K.Koch
  • Acer microphyllum Pax
  • Acer rubrum f. breviramusculum Vict.
  • Acer rubrum f. clausum (Pax) Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. columnare (Rehder) Dans.
  • Acer rubrum f. drummondii (Hook. & Arn. ex Nutt.) Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. microphyllum (Wesm.) Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. pallidiflorum (K.Koch ex Pax) Fernald
  • Acer rubrum f. palmatum Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. pendulum (Van Houtte) Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. rotundata Sarg.
  • Acer rubrum f. rubrum
  • Acer rubrum f. sanguineum (Spach) Lavallée
  • Acer rubrum f. semiorbiculatum (Pax) Schwer.
  • Acer rubrum f. tomentosum (Tausch) Dans.
  • Acer rubrum f. tridens (Alph.Wood) B.Boivin
  • Acer rubrum f. viride (Detmers) A.E.Murray

and 33 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.