Station 9
Botanical Name: Acer saccharum
Common Name: Sugar Maple
Major Deciduous Tree
Native Origin: Eastern North America
Height: 60’-75 May Reach 110’
Spread: 40’-50’
Form: Broadly Oval to Rounded
Flowers: Yellow-Green
Fruit: 1”-2” Winged Samara
Bark: Gray-Brown, As tree increases in age bark becomes rough and scaly with long vertical strips.
Comments: Wing fruit, called samaras, fall from the tree in whirling helicopter-like motion. The sugar maple is the tree that the breakfast treat maple syrup comes from. Producing maple syrup is not as simple as one may think. It takes 30-40 gallons of sap boiled down to make only one gallon of syrup. Examining the leaf you can see that the edges do not have any fine teeth and are smooth, this can help you identify the sugar maple from the various other maples.