Timely question!

In the biblical sense, I think of tree life strength in D&D terms. A healthy tree may have 50 hit points. Good early frost after a warm spell might take five or ten. Drought, another 20. Eventually it needs a regular year to recoup some points of strength.

-1F is pretty darned cold for zone 7 especially later in the year. My bet is you have a below average seed crop and some tip damage. Only the weakest trees should really suffer, especially since we are dealing with a species that is more than zone 7 cold hardy.

Let me know in a month if I was right!

I'd imagine it won't affect leaf buds this early on, but would the blooms be toast?

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if a dormant plant comes active.. and then is hit with a freeze [we arent talking frost here] ... man you guys ought to live in the great white north... lol...

then all active buds can be lost.. depending on the depth and duration of the cold ...

up here.. we pray they stay fully dormant late into spring ...

many plants ... trees.. shrubs... etc.. can rebud.. and releaf at least once ... and sometimes twice ... i like to say.. they have a sense of huor about the first time.. but really get pissed off with the second insult in a given season ....

most conifers though e.g. .. can not... so if you kill those buds.. kapout ... [canadian pronunciation.. lol] .. you lose ...

ergo.. ipso presto ... your worries about flower and seed is kinda like coming at it from the wrong direction... you better hope your trees live.. let alone bloom and seed ...

i have seen bud damage at 31 degrees... and as long as i live.. i have never seen one freakin degree after dormancy broke ... and i have seen plants.. continue to leaf out.. like nothing happened.. and then die a month later .... and all i could attribute it to was the freeze ...

unless i misunderstand your situation... you better start holding your breath.. if your plants broke dormancy ....

ken

ps: if they started flowering.. they broke dormancy ...

Well, in the past, I have seen full crops of samaras on silver maple after a freeze in the teens during bloom...but not zero. So I gather they are pretty resilient. Just not sure how much.

We'll see, but the cold has been consistent here, so I'd guess they "know" what they're doing. Like you've observed, those tree-species buds are OK w/teens even after blooming.

What a shame it would be if the silver maple seed crop was diminished, lol! Back when my giant one was still standing, I truly used to use the snow shovel to collect these things off my driveway. I wish I was making that up but I'm not.

Bottom line, Hair, we're just going to have to wait and find out. You raise some interesting questions, given your somewhat warmer zone and all.

I should think that by now, in the part of the world I live in, Acer saccharinum has had every insult imagineable thrown at it. But then again, I've not seen any empirical evidence that would tend to answer your question.

+oM

I'd assume so. Think back to the record early spring we had a few years ago. All the blooms of the fruit trees where zapped by 20s. The yeild was definitely impacted.

Then again as someone mentioned the two specific species you mention may be much more resilant. Although it might be a good thing those two are diminished like Tom mentioned.