Now is the time for red maples (and other species) to come out as their true selves.

Red maple trees are flowering. Male and female blooms can be seen in their leafless glory. These trees are joyfully showing off both sex blossoms, sometimes on the same tree and sometimes with trees even alternating genders year to year. While the idea of dual and changeable genders may offend some of our southern politicians, I suggest they might keep a more open mind when it comes to his and hers.

Author and actor Chaz Bono explains gender this way: “There’s a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 per cent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they’re mismatched. That’s all it is. It’s not complicated, it’s not a neurosis. It’s a mix-up. It’s a birth defect, like a cleft palate.”

While Chaz is certain of his gender, red maples are less easily defined. In their botanical world, the equation is much more complicated. Generally, on flowers, the male reproductive organs are collectively the stamen, and the pistil contains the female organs.  Plants are described as being monoecious (one individual has both male and female reproductive organs) or dioecious (having male and female reproductive organs on separate individuals). Both ways can be effective for reproduction.

But red maples have their own gender continuum. An individual red maple tree can have exclusively male flowers, solely female flowers, or a mix of both male and female flowers on one single tree. Moreover, those flowers can change throughout the tree’s lifecycle; one year being all male and in others female, or again mixed.

Boston University biologist Dr. Richard Primack performed some interesting studies on red maple trees in Massachusetts in the 1980s. He found unique and changeable sex characteristics on his botanic subjects, describing their variable state as “complexities in gender expression.”

There is even a specialized nomenclature that has been created for the fluid gender status of red maples. Twentieth-century Harvard botanist M. L. Fernald described them as polygamodioecious. Later on, a modern Harvard scientist, P. Barry Tomlinson, suggested the term polygamomonoecious to describe their unfixed situation.

No matter what you call this gender-bending tree, we can all agree that in today’s political climate it is good that these trees aren’t people. If they were, red maples would be in for a tough time in Mississippi and North Carolina, where legislation referred to as the ‘bathroom bills’ are making rigid gender distinctions the basis for bigotry, prejudice and hate.

Whether we speak of humans or trees, the important concept is each individual’s sense of self. As with all living things, the idea is the same: you are who you are, and deserve to be treated with respect. Perhaps, even, like a reverse Lorax, understanding red maples better can increase the understanding of gender-diverse humans. 

And though United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon wasn’t speaking of red maples, his entreaty could also be true for them, and more so our human brethren: “To those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, let me say, you are not alone. Your struggle, for the end to violence and discrimination, is a shared struggle. Today, I stand with you. And I call upon all countries and people, to stand with you too . . . . And for you, as well, ‘The time has come.’” 

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature.