Garden Q&A: Are there seedless red maples?

Q: Are there red maple trees that don’t produce the helicopter seeds? They are so profuse, and the seedlings are annoying to weed out of the yard.

Yes, there are some options for seedless maples. Red maple (Acer rubrum) is a polygamo-dioecious species, a term which refers to how it flowers. An individual plant of a dioecious species produces either only male or only female flowers. For polygamo-dioecious plants, some individuals in the population will have flowers of both sexes on the same plant. Most cultivars of red maple trees are either male or female.

Although male cultivars do exist (‘Brandywine’, ‘Somerset’, and ‘Sun Valley’ are examples), the most widely-grown varieties on the market happen to be female. That means they will be capable of producing seeds once they are pollinated.