The leaf stalk and twigs also have a reddish color.įlowers: Small, hanging clusters of bright red flowers appear in spring before the leaves. Red maple leaves are green on the top and a light greenish white on the underside, and turn brilliant red in autumn. Red maple leaves are more toothed, while the lobes on sugar maples have smoother edges. To distinguish them, look at the teeth on the leaf edges.

It is easy to confuse red maple with sugar maple. Leaves: Maple trees have palmately lobed leaves, which means their leaves resemble the shape of a hand with five lobes that extend in a fingerlike fashion from a central point, similar to palm of your hand. However, it tends to bud and flower very early in the season, which has a negative effect on the sap, making the syrup season for the red maple very short. Red maple can be used for syrup production. It is wide ranging, and native throughout the eastern half of the United States. Red Maple is a deciduous tree that can be 50 to 60 feet tall at maturity. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. 2004.Red Maple (Acer rubrum) Fact Sheet USDA-‐NRCS PLANTS Database/Britton, N.L., and A. Plant Guide: Sugar Maple, USDA NRCS National Plant Data Center & the Biota of North America Program. Forest Trees of the Northeast, edited by Lassoie, Luzadis, and Grover. Textbook of Dendrology. McGraw-Hill Inc., N.Y. The Complete Trees of North America Field Guide and Natural History. United States Department of Agriculture.Įlias, T.S. Trees of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. Songbirds, woodpeckers, and cavity nesters use the sugar maple as a home.īrockman, C.F. White-tailed deer, moose, porcupine, squirrels and snowshoe hare commonly eat the bark, twigs, or fruit of the sugar maple. Sugar maple is of high ecological importance, providing food and shelter for a wide variety of organisms. Sugar maple constitutes about 6% of the hardwood saw timber value in the US, with rising production of saw timber and firewood. The wood is valued for being hard, heavy and strong common uses include furniture, flooring, and veneer as well as tool handles, musical instruments, and baseball bats. Native Americans also used the sap as a fresh or fermented beverage or soured as vinegar when cooking meat. Along with honey, sugar maple was the main source of sweetener for Native Americans and early European settlers. The watery sap is boiled or evaporated into a thick syrup or undergoes further evaporation to produce maple sugar, a common candy. An individual tree can produce 5-60 liters of sap per day, which may sound like a lot, but 35-45 liters of sap are required to make 1 liter of syrup. Trees are tapped in early spring when the sap begins to flow and sugar content is highest. It is the favorable tree for syrup production as the sap contains twice the sugar concentration of any other maple species (~2.5% sugar). It is the state tree of New York and is featured on the Canadian flag, evidence of its value to the Northern territories.

Sugar maple has huge historical and economic importance for its use in the maple sugar and timber industries. The range of sugar maple extends from Nova Scotia and Quebec at its northern edge, west to Ontario, southeastern Manitoba, and western Minnesota, south to southern Missouri, and east to Tennessee and northern Georgia.

It does best on moist, well-drained soils and poorly on dry, shallow, or swampy soils. Sugar maple is a shade tolerant tree common in many northern hardwood and mixed forests. It is one of the largest and most important hardwood species in North America, typically reaching 70-90 feet in height with a dense, spreading crown. Sugar maple ( Acer saccharum) is a deciduous tree also referred to as hard maple or rock maple. Leaves – simple, deciduous, usually 5-lobed, and with entire margins.īuds – imbricated, brown, and sharply pointed.įruit – ¾-1″ U-shaped samaras that mature in the fall.īark – variable, gray (often with a brown tinge), and furrowed-scaly when older.

Types of maple trees in ny