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| ## sugar maple {#sugar-maple .Title-Header}                           |
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| *Acer saccharum* Marsh.                                               |
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| Plant Symbol = ACSA3                                                  |
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####### *Contributed By: USDA NRCS National Plant Data Center & the Biota of North America Program*

## Alternate common names

Hard maple, head maple, sugartree, bird's-eye maple

## Uses

Sugar maple is the only tree today used for commercial syrup production,
as its sap has twice the sugar content of other maple species. The sap,
mostly collected in the spring, is concentrated by boiling or reverse
osmosis, with about 35-40 liters of sap making 1 liter of syrup. A
single tree may produce 5-60 liters of sap per year. Nights below
freezing and days at higher than 5°C are needed to ensure good sap flow.
Sugar maple was the premier source of sweetener, along with honey, to
Native Americans and early European settlers. Native Americans also used
sugar maple sap for sugar and candies, as a beverage, fresh or fermented
into beer, and soured into vinegar and used to cook meat.

Sugar maple is widely planted as an ornamental or shade tree and many
cultivars have been selected, based on variation in growth habit/crown
shape, mature height, fall color, leaf shape, and temperature tolerance.
The leaves go from green to brilliant yellow, orange, and red in autumn,
although there is much variation in fall color within the species.
Orange and reds seem to be more intense in New England types, while
yellows are more pronounced further west. Interior leaves may be yellow,
while outer exposed leaves turn orange-red. The species is

best suited to larger sites where soil compaction is not a concern. It
also is sometimes used in shelterbelt plantings and has potential value
for rehabilitation of disturbed sites.

Sugar maple is an important timber tree valued for its hard, heavy, and
strong wood, commonly used to make furniture, paneling, flooring, and
veneer. It is also used for gunstocks, tool handles, plywood dies,
cutting blocks, woodenware, novelty products, sporting goods, bowling
pins, and musical instruments.
![](media/image2.png){width="2.7868055555555555in"
height="1.9458333333333333in"}

White-tailed deer, moose, and snowshoe hare commonly browse sugar maple.
Red squirrel, gray squirrel, and flying squirrels feed on the seeds,
buds, twigs, and leaves. Porcupines consume the bark and can girdle the
upper stem. Songbirds, woodpeckers, and cavity nesters nest in sugar
maple. Although the flowers appear to be wind-pollinated, the
early-produced pollen may be important to the biology of bees and other
pollen-dependent insects because many insects, especially bees, visit
the flowers.

## Status

Please consult the PLANTS Web site and your State Department of Natural
Resources for this plant's current status, such as, state noxious
status, and wetland indicator values.

## Description 

*General:* Maple Family (Aceraceae). A native tree with a dense,
spreading crown, to 25-37(-40) m in height; bark light gray to
gray-brown, rough, deeply furrowed, and darker with age. The leaves are
deciduous, opposite, long-petioled, blades 5-11 cm long and about as
wide, with 5 shallow, blunt or short-pointed lobes, edges coarsely
toothed, dark green and glabrous above, whitish and more or less hairy
below, turning intensely red, orange, or yellow in fall. The flowers are
small, greenish-yellow, in long-stalked, drooping clusters or racemes,
each cluster with 8 to 14 flowers. Most trees are either male or female
(the species is essentially dioecious), but both kinds of flowers occur
on some trees (technically monoecious), sometimes segregated on
different branches. The fruits are winged nutlets (samaras) in a pair,
2-2.5 cm long, clustered on long stalks, red to red-brown. The common
name refers to the use of the species for making sugar and syrup.

*Variation within the species:* Closely similar forms of sugar maple
have been recognized at various taxonomic ranks -- from varieties to
subspecies and species. Three of them are now generally recognized as
species, but the differences are technical and it is difficult to be
sure of the correct identifications of trees sold as "sugar maple" in
the southeastern US. Duncan and Duncan (1988) gives a good summary of
the distribution and morphology of these species.

-   Florida maple (*A. barbatum*, including *A. floridanum*): primarily
    a species of the Gulf and southeast Atlantic coastal plain, from
    Texas to North Carolina and Virginia, and up the Mississippi valley
    as far as Missouri and Illinois.

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-   chalk maple (*A. leucoderme*): similar in distribution to Florida
    maple, but not extending into Virginia or up the Mississippi valley.

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-   black maple (*A. nigrum*): similar in distribution to 'true' sugar
    maple, but somewhat more restricted.

Norway maple (*Acer platanoides*), an introduced European species, is
often planted and looks similar to sugar maple, but Norway maple has
broader leaves with drooping lobes, and sap from a broken petiole is
milky.

*Distribution:* Sugar maple is widespread in mixed hardwood forests of
the eastern United States. It grows from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick
westward to Ontario and Manitoba, North Dakota and South Dakota,
southward into eastern Kansas into Oklahoma, and southward in the east
through New England to Georgia. For current distribution, please consult
the Plant Profile page for this species on the PLANTS Web site.

## Adaptation 

Sugar maple most commonly occurs in rich, mesic woods but also grows in
drier upland woods. It often grows in canyons, ravines, valleys, stream
terraces, and streambanks, but it is occasionally found on dry rocky
hillsides, at 500-1700 meters elevation. It is a dominant or codominant
in many northern hardwood and mixed mesophytic forests. Common
codominants include beech (*Fagus grandifolia*), birch (*Betula* spp.),
American basswood (*Tilia americana*), northern red oak (*Quercus
rubra*), white oak (*Quercus alba*), and yellow poplar (*Liriodendron*
*tulifera*), but it also grows with various other hardwood species as
well as conifers such as pine, spruce, fir, and eastern hemlock.

In the absence of disturbance, forests of jack pine, eastern white pine,
eastern hemlock, yellow birch, or red pine are replaced by sugar maple
and American basswood. Because repeated disturbance by fire was common
in eastern deciduous forests in pre-settlement times, succession to
sugar maple-American basswood stands may have taken as long as 650 years
in some locations. Increases in sugar maple during the past 50 years in
central and Great Lakes hardwood forests have been attributed to fire
suppression.

This species flowers in April-June, with fruiting occurring in
June-October. Fruits ripen about 12-16 weeks after flowering and begin
to fall about 2 weeks after ripening. Leaves generally drop just after
seeds have fallen. At the southern edge of the species\' range, dead
leaves tend to remain on the trees through much of the winter.

## Establishment

Minimum seed-bearing age for sugar maple is 30-40 years; maximum seed
production is reached after about 60 years of age. Seed is abundantly
produced each year but peaks occur mostly from 2-5 years. Seeds are
dispersed in fall and germinate in spring. Germination occurs on moist
mineral soil or in the litter layer, at an optimal temperature of about
1° C. Seeds can remain viable for up to 5 years but few persist in the
seed bank for more than one year. Sugar maple seeds require moist
stratification at temperatures slightly above freezing for 35-90 days.

Sugar maple is shade-tolerant but seedlings in dense young stands may
survive for only 5 years; those in older stands commonly persist for
many years. Such a bank of abundant seedlings and saplings can remain
suppressed until gaps are created by windfall or other disturbances,
where they typically respond vigorously and rapidly to release. Sugar
maples can live for up to 500 years.

Stump sprouting and root sprouting are moderately common means of
vegetative reproduction after mechanical disturbance in natural
conditions, especially in the northern part of its range, and layering
occasionally occurs.

## Management

Sugar maples are not particularly good street trees, because they are
intolerant of compacted soil, high heat, air pollution, and road salt
commonly found in urban environments. They are susceptible to stem and
root injury, and verticillum wilt may occur when grown in heavy, poorly
drained soils. "Maple decline," periodic die-backs of relatively large
trees in the Northeast, has been attributed to acid rain and other air
pollutants, particularly in the last two decades, but its exact causes
are not understood.

Even light ground fires may damage the thin bark of sugar maple. Hot
fires can kill an entire stand and existing regeneration. The trees
sprout poorly after fire. Although communities with sugar maple are
relatively resistant to ground fires, a fire hazard may occur in dry
years during October, after the leaves have fallen.

Seed can propagate sugar maple; early spring plantings generally produce
the best results. Nurserymen usually rely on budding or grafting or
sometimes use air layering or rooting of stem cuttings. Use stem tips
35-55 centimeters long taken in mid June with fully elongated bottom
leaves; rooting occurs in 4-6 weeks under mist in a 2:1:1 mixture of
sandy loam, vermiculite, and peat moss.

## Cultivars, Improved and Selected Materials (and area of origin)

This species is readily available through local nursuries.

## References

Duncan, W.H. & M.B. Duncan 1988. *Trees of the southeastern United
States*. Univ. of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia.

Godman, R.M., H.W. Yawney, & C.H. Tubbs 1990. *Acer saccharum* Marsh.
Sugar Maple. Pp. 78-91, IN: R.M. Burns and B.H. Honkala (tech. coords.).
*Silvics of North America*. *Volume 2*. *Hardwoods*. USDA Forest Service
Agric. Handbook 654, Washington, D.C.
\<http://willow.ncfes.umn.edu/silvics_manual/volume_2/acer/saccharum.htm\>

Koelling, M.R. & R.B. Heiligmann (eds.) 1996. *North American maple
syrup producers manual*. Ohio State Univ. Extension Bull. 856.
\<http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/\~ohioline/b856/index.html\> Accessed
August 2000.

Li, H.-L. 1960. *The cultivated maples*. Morris Arbor. Bull. 11:41-47.

Tirmenstein, D.A. 1991. *Acer saccharum*. IN: W.C. Fischer (compiler*).
The Fire Effects Information System* \[Data base\]. USDA, Forest
Service, Intermountain Research Station, Intermountain Fire Sciences
Laboratory, Missoula, Montana.
\<http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/acesac/\>

## Prepared By

*Guy Nesom*, BONAP, North Carolina Botanical Garden, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

## Species Coordinator

*Lincoln Moore*, USDA NRCS National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge,
Louisiana

Edited: 17jan01 jsp; 07feb03ahv; 24may06jsp

For more information about this and other plants, please contact your
local NRCS field office or Conservation District, and visit the PLANTS
Web site\<[http://plants.usda.gov](http://plants.usda.gov/)\> or the
Plant Materials Program Web site
\<[http://Plant-Materials.nrcs.usda.gov](http://Plant-Materials.nrcs.usda.gov/)\>

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