Pictured: Acer glabrum — the species. This variety isn’t separately illustrated.
Aceraceae family
Douglas Maple (var. douglasii) Acer glabrum var. douglasiivariety
Native
Douglas Maple (var. douglasii) is a perennial tree native to Canada and the lower 48 states. It grows to 30 ft and blooms May in full sun, with brown fruit. A keystone plant for native insects and the food web.
More about this plant
Acer glabrum is a species of maple native to western North America, from southeastern Alaska, British Columbia and western Alberta, east to western Nebraska, and south through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Colorado to California, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. Wikipedia →
Derived (allometric) — width = height × functional-class crown ratio fit on USDA Urban Tree DB · Tallo; method per Jucker et al. 2022, Pretzsch et al. 2015 — Mature width
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Growth Rate / Spread / Growth Form / Lifespan / Active Growth Period / Seed Period — Spread · Growth rate · Growth form · Active growth
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
USDA PLANTS — FoliageTexture — Foliage
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Fruit/Seed Color / Fruit Persistence — Fruit
Lifespan: USDA’s lifespan scale for trees: short = under ~100 years · moderate = 100–250 · long = over 250. Balsam fir and other short-lived conifers are genuinely short for a tree, not short like an annual.
Height
30 ft
Mature width
~ 18 ft wide DERIVEDderived estimate — open-grown crown allometry (height × growth-form ratio); not a measurement
Spacing
4–8 ft apart from USDA planting density
Spread
None — clumping
Growth rate
Moderate
Growth form
Single stem
Lifespan
Perennial · moderate
Foliage
coarse texture
Active growth
Spring & summer
Fruit
Brown
In the garden
Sources · In the garden
USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — Propagation Method / Commercial Availability — Propagate by · In the trade
Sow timing keys off your local last- and first-frost dates.
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a
guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.
❧ Caterpillar hosts~297 caterpillar species · keystone genus▸
Acer supports ~297 caterpillar species.
Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most
songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is
a powerhouse genus.
Recorded feeding on Acer in North America, including:
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Same genus / family, ranked by ecological value — from the PlantKey catalog
How we know this (1)Methods & honest limits ▸
Mature widthDerived
For woody plants that have a height but no measured crown, we estimate width = height × a crown-to-height ratio fit for that plant’s form (conifers narrower than broadleaf trees, shrubs widest), calibrated on our measured open-grown crowns and capped at the largest one ever measured. A measured crown always wins; herbaceous plants get nothing (no anchor).
Honest limits: A coarse class-median estimate for garden-scale spacing, not a measurement; woody single/multi-stem forms only.
Allometric basis: Jucker et al. 2022 (Tallo); Pretzsch et al. 2015; McPherson et al. 2016 (USDA Urban Tree DB).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation.
Full methodology →
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this pageOpen data, please attribute ▸
PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).
