Yes,

weedsday; you read that right. Norway maples, Acer platanoides, Toronto’s most domin

ant (in so many senses) street tree. You can’t garden in Toronto, especially its east end, without grappling with these non-native giants; trees that are as voracious as they are fecund.

But, gee, they have pretty flowers. They’re all chartreuse and fluffy-y.  From certain angles, they catch the light and seem illuminated.

A soft, green, billowing cloud of bright maple flowers. Each one of them just itching to ripen into a very viable fruit and plant itself in a garden, or a fence, or a hedge, or a ravine, or, what the heck, all four

and

more, near you.

I’ve written about my love/hate for Norway maples before; here in 2007 and again here in 2009. I’ll probably be writing about them in 2011 and beyond. They are my beautiful bane.

Fortunately, the seedlings are also very easy to pull up, if you catch them now when they’ve just germinated. Don’t let them go too long, though. Those innocent-looking roots get tenacious pretty quickly.