Though forests are vital ecosystems to humans many aspects of forest dynamics remain unknown, including how reproduction of tree species may shift under climate change. Most studies have focused on predicting tree growth, i.e., plant productivity, under novel environmental conditions, but understanding how reproduction may also be affected will be especially vital to forecasting future forest communities. Of particular interest is the relationship between annual growth and reproductive output, which has often been hypothesized as a tradeoff between allocating resources to growth or to reproduction. Two proposed pathways of this tradeoff, resource accumulation, i.e., storage of resources over time, and resource allocation, i.e., same year allocation of resources to reproduction, have been widely explored in relation to masting events. It has also been proposed that there is no internal tradeoff between the two functions, but rather there exists one or more climate variables that are intrinsically linked to both, referred to as the “weather hypothesis.” In this study, we use dendrochronological data and seed rain collections from forest stands at two latitudes to determine if one or more of these strategies are taking place in two commonly occurring tree species, red maple, Acer rubrum, and sugar maple, Acer saccharum. We found evidence of a tradeoff in both species. We also found a combination of strategies was the norm, and there appeared to be evidence to also support the weather hypothesis. However, in both species, the strategy which dictated the tradeoff switched between the northern and southern regions. Identifying the combination of pathways that link growth and reproduction and how these change between populations can assist in understanding and forecasting plant allocation of resources as growing conditions vary.