![]() Sugar maple is also regularly confused with the non-native Norway maple ( Acer platanoides), which is widely planted in many urban areas. The underside of the leaves and the leaf stalks are often covered in soft brown hairs, and their are a pair of stipules at the base of the leaf stalk. The lobes often droop giving the leaf a wilted appearance. The central lobe of black maple leaves is broad with rounded shoulders, and the bottom lobes are reduced or absent. Sugar maple is closely related toa and hybridizes with black maple ( Acer nigrum). Sugar maple is also highly valued for its hard, fine-grained wood, which is used for making furniture, musical instruments, veneer, cutting blocks, flooring, rolling pins and more. A single tree may produce up to about 225 litres of sap in one season. About 27 litres of sap makes 1 pound of maple sugar. It takes 40 litres of sap to make 1 litre of syrup. Sap is collected in buckets or through a system of hoses, then boiled down until concentrated into syrup. Spouts are inserted through the bark into the sapwood to divert the sap that is rising up from the roots. Sap is tapped from the trees in the late winter/early spring when nighttime temperatures are consistently below freezing and daytime temperatures rise above freezing, triggering the sap to flow during the day. ![]() European colonists learned the skill of syrup-making from indigenous peoples. ![]() The species and common names, saccharum and sugar, refer to the sweet sap from which syrup or sugar can be made.Ĭommercial use The sap of sugar maple is used to make maple syrup and maple sugar. The genus name Acer means sharp, referring to the sharp tips of the leaf lobes of most maples. Sugar maples can grow to be 200 or more years old. The sugar maple leaf appears in a stylized form on the Canadian flag and the Toronto Maple Leafs logo. Sugar maple is a dominant tree of mixed- and deciduous- forests throughout Eastern North America. ![]()
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