Help With Unknown Red Maple Disease

While doing some planning related to trying to make maple syrup from my existing red maples, I remembered some smaller red maple trees exhibiting a very strange growth on their bark. I went to investigate, and got some photos.

I have google searched repeatedly, but I can’t seem to find anything that looks similar. See attached photos, it is some sort of dry brittle growth on the bark and limbs. You can break it off with your fingers. It is in long straight rows. This is happening on a few trees, but other maples nearby are not affected.

Both of these groups of trees exhibiting this growth are likely to have had their roots damaged by nearby excavation, unsure if that is related or not. My first priority is assuming this is something bad I do not want whatever this is to spread to my large mature red maples which are 300+ foot away at the bottom of the hill, I do not mind to lose these small trees, but do not want to lose the large ones.

So what do I do? Spray them with chemicals? Cut them down? Dig them up? Are they safe to chip? Do they need removed from the site? Burned?

i think these are sweetgum trees, not maples. perfectly normal bark for them.

So I guess the disease can be characterised as I think everything with 5 pointed leaves is a Maple tree...

Which is why my image searches never matched with the word "maple" in there.

Boy I feel stupid.

But I appreciate your prompt diagnosis!

but maybe happy to not have to take extreme measures?

for what it’s worth and for future reference, my red maples seem to have well more than 5 points on their leaves.