Maven SCM support for branches relies on the local branch name being the same as the remote branch name. Tools such as the maven-release-plugin will push changes using the same local and remote branch names as explained at https://maven.apache.org/scm/git.html

Ex. git push pushUrl currentBranch:currentBranch

Jenkins jobs that perform a maven release MUST configure the LocalBranch extension with the correct branch name sans the remote name. For example, if building a release for origin/master, you must configure LocalBranch to be master.

To facilitate this requirement, LocalBranch values of "**" or null should be allowed and result in using the remote branch name.

Pull Request covering this feature submitted https://github.com/jenkinsci/git-plugin/pull/381