Now I know that the tree off to the right (not in the picture) is a sugar maple, and I don't think it's the only sugar maple, but I think it's largely silver maples over on the side where this picture was taken. And in general, I think the ones with shaggy bark are silver maple. But with one casual glance, today it struck me that the tree that is in the center of the above photo is a sugar maple. This is the same thing that I was noticing yesterday at Lock 7. Trees I once struggled to identify are now recognizable at a glance. Of course, there are lots of trees I still struggle to identify.
To confirm my flash of insight, I checked for flowers. At this time, the silver maples have flowers while the sugar maples do not. Checking the flowers confirmed my flash of recognition.
Last year, on March 24, 2011 I looked at these same trees and concluded that the center one was a sugar maple. But last year, I looked at the flowers and then drew the conclusion based on the flowers. This year, I just recognized it by the way the trunk of the tree looked.
