Can trees be too young to flower?

Question

i have a red maple and white ash that are about 8 years old. can it be too young to flower? Is flowering the same thing as bearing seeds?

Answer 1

Yes, but I doubt that eight years is too young to flower.

Flowering and bearing seeds are not the same thing, but they are related. Seeds derive from pollinating the ovule of an the flower of an angiosperm's (or the ovulate strobilus [female cone] of a gymnosperm), which becomes a seeded fruit.

Answer 2

If they have seeds then they had flowers.

The flowers on ash and maple are pretty small and if you did not know what you were looking at you would likely miss them.

Red maple flowers are red and white ash flowers are purple.

They both are just little and only appear in early spring.

Ash usually grow the male and female flowers on different trees, so if there are no other ash trees near you might not see any ash keys, because a male tree or an unfertilized tree won't have them..

An 8 year old tree should be producing flowers, but it is more about size than age..hard sugar maple trees can take up to 25 years before they produce flowers, but soft swamp maple (red maple) usually starts to flower much sooner.