The Sugar Maple

By Al Lowe
Contributor

Canada - the Land of the Maple Leaf. The Canadian maple leaf emblem is usually a rather stylized copy of one of our most common eastern trees - the Sugar Maple. Its scientific name is Acer saccharum, which is simply sugar maple in Latin.
This is one of the major trees of the great eastern forests, from the Atlantic to the Manitoba border, and south to Georgia and Alabama. In north Ontario, it is just at about the north and west corner of its range.
The leaves have large lobes, and the edges are smooth. Each leaf has (usually) five main lobes, and each of these has a few large 'teeth'. The fruit is a double-winged key, called a samara by botanists. These seeds do not ripen until fall, and then they spin for long distances in the autumn winds.
The Sugar Maple is one of the most important commercial trees of eastern North America. Its wood is used for furniture and for clear, light-coloured hardwood flooring, as well as for toys, cutting blocks, bowling pins, and other situations requiring hardwood. Every farm in the east used to have a maple woodlot where the winter's firewood was cut. In years gone by, maple ashes were used extensively in the manufacture of soap.
Probably the best known use for the Sugar Maple is for maple syrup and maple sugar. In Quebec and Ontario, a whole spring festival has grown up around the tapping of the maple trees while the snow is still on the ground. If you ever get the opportunity, go to one of these 'sugarings'. It will take you back to the pioneer days of the early Canada. Tapping the maples is one of the many things which our ancestors learned from the Indians.
The Sugar Maple is one of the 'climax' trees of the eastern forest. Young maples will grown in the shade, which a lot of other trees will not do. So, over a long period of time, without any influence from man, a lot of the forest will evolve into nearly pure stands of maple. The other seedlings simply die out in the shade, while the maples survive. Maples are not the only ones which do this, but they are the major ones in many places. This explains the vast areas of nearly pure maple forest found by the first settlers in this country.
In the fall, the green chlorophyll disappears from the leaves, and the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows of the fall maples show through. Not many things in nature can surpass the cathedral beauty of the maple woods in autumn.
Recently, the maple forests have been attacked by certain diseases, which seem to have gained a substantial foothold. But the most pressing problem for our national tree is acid rain. This is rapidly reducing our ability to produce lumber, syrup and even firewood. Can it be that doomsday is getting closer for the Maple Leaf?