Sugar Maple
Acer saccharum
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Sugar Maple grows from Nova Scotia westward to Ontario, southward to northeastern Texas, eastward to Georgia, and northward through the Appalachian Mountains to New England. It grows best in moist, well-drained soils as well as partial to full sun. It's tolerant of compacted soil, air pollution, and road salt, making it a good tree for urban environments.
Fruit: A double samara clustered on long, reddish stalks. They begin as green and mature to brown. They're available from June to September.
Flowers: A yellow flower arranged in drooping panicles made up of racemes. They're available from April to June.
Uses: Sugar maple is the only tree still used commercially for syrup production. Maples are leading furniture woods, with the wood being used for flooring, furniture, and more.
Ethnobotany: The sap was used by Native Americans and European settlers as a sweetener, in candies, as a beverage, in beer, and to cook meat.
Importance to wildlife: Sugar maple is a larval host to Imperial Moths. The cavities in the tree are used by birds to nest. Deer and moose browse the stems and leaves, and porcupines feed off of the bark. Pollinators consume the nectar from the flowers.
The bark of a sugar maple. Bark is variable--grayish or brownish, smooth or rough, with broad, platelike ridges that sometimes have a loose edge, or with deep furrows and narrow, scaly ridges.
Twigs coming directly off of the trunk rather than off of branches.
A single leaf on a sugar maple. Leaves are 7-15 cm long, 5-lobed or rarely 3-lobed, lobes consisting of a few large teeth, green glabrous above, and paler and mostly glabrous beneath. Leaves change to yellow, orange, and red in the fall.
The leaf arrangement on a sugar maple. Maples have an opposite arrangement.
A terminal bud cluster on a sugar maple. Terminal buds are 5-7 mm long, conical, sharply pointed, with many visible scales.
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