28. Sugar Maple

Also called the, soft maple, or white maple.

Specimen Size: 66.2ft tall, 12in in diameter.

Location: Along King Lane NE south of Thomson hall.

Historical Background: The chief attributes of this species are its being a major component of forests in much of eastern North America, its warm fall color, its highly useful wood, and its sweet sap. When the trees are leafless in late winter, their sap rises and descends with the temperature, and people extract it to make maple syrup or sugar. The Mohegan tribe, based in present day Connecticut used the inner bark as a cough syrup and sweetener. The oldest known individual of this species is found in Ontario, Canada, with an age of about 500 years. Its leaf is the emblem of that countries flag.

Our climate is too warm in winter for commercially worthwhile sap harvest, but the trees grow well here. Bowling alleys and bowling pins are usually made of sugar maple wood, along with basketball courts. Many musical instruments are part sugar maple, including violin sides and backs, guitar necks, and drum shells. Pool cue shafts are another product of this fine timber species. Sugar maple leaves are packed around apples, root crops, and other such foods to help preserve them.

Non-Native

Native Range: Eastern North America and Midwest

Identifying Features: The second of the maples on this tour, this tree may be the most familiar to most due to its ability to bedeckt our pancakes and waffles with flavor and sweetness. While it cannot produce syrup here at the relatively warm UW, it expresses many traits seen in the maple family. Leaves are palmate and lobed, in this species major lobes of 5 are capped with smaller lobes generally in 3 in a double sawtooth pattern. The silvery green leaves grow in an opposite pattern, and winged paired seeds may be seen clustered at their bases in spring and into summer. The bark is a light smooth grey which becomes furrowed into strips with age. Maples are also known for their fall color, with this species turning a bright yellow in fall.

Identifying Features In Depth:

1. Form: Large with a stout trunk demonstrating low apical control with large forks in branching leading to a spreading open crown of irregular curving branches.

2. Leaves: Graceful, growing opposite one another. They are generally ovate but interspersed with 5 deep lobes, with each major lobe often having 3 smaller lobes of their own which are pointed in a double saw tooth manner. They grow in a palmate manner, with 5 main veins becoming hairless with a slender drooping leafstalk. They are 4-6” (10-25cm) in length and dull green on top and silvery white beneath. In autumn they turn a bright yellow.

3. Bark: Gray and smoother, becoming furrowed into ridges that are scaly or shaggy as the tree ages. Twigs are light green to brown, usually slightly drooping. When crushed they release a rather unpleasant smell.

4. Reproductive Bodies: Flowers are reddish when in bud form, turning greenish yellow once open to a size of about 6mm. They are crowded together without stalks separated into clusters by sex in late winter before leaves. The winged seeds indicative of maples appear later in the spring with widely forked shaped on the paired helicopters and light brown in color. They are up to 2.5” (6cm) in length.