sugar maple

Photo: Superior National Forest — CC BY 2.0 · source

Survives zone 3 through 8

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Spring sap boiled down to maple syrup — the classic sugar maple, all-sucrose and among the sweetest tappable saps.

Hardiness

Zone 3–8

Habit

Tree

Edible part

Sap

Ripens

Late winter (sap run)

Mature size

Large tree 25–35 m — not containerable

Light

Shade-tolerant as a tree — but sap sugar is highest in large, open, sunlit crowns

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Temperate

Native range

Eastern and central North America — Nova Scotia and Quebec west to Minnesota, south to Georgia and eastern Texas; rich upland hardwood forest, and the backbone of the North American syrup industry.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

10+ yrs (sap)

Growth speed

30–60 cm/year — moderate to slow, and long-lived with it.

Spacing

1200 cm (472 in) apart — about 144 m² (1550 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Opposite, palmate, 8–20 cm across with five lobes, the upper three much deeper than the lower pair; the sinuses between lobes are smoothly U-shaped and the margins have no fine teeth — the clean edge separates it from red and silver maple at a glance.

Root system

Deep and widely spreading, with a strong central root on good ground — better anchored and less pavement-lifting than red or Norway maple.

Fruit description

Paired winged samaras 2–3.5 cm long, the two wings held at about 90° or less, ripening in autumn. ⚠ The crop that matters here is the sap, not the seed: roughly 40 litres of sap boil down to 1 litre of syrup, at around 2% sugar — the highest of any maple.

Propagation

Seed (the winged samara) needs 40–120 days moist cold stratification at 1–5°C; autumn sowing outdoors achieves this naturally. Named forms are grafted, since seedlings vary.

Pollination

Polygamomonoecious — male, female and bisexual flowers on the same tree, so a single tree can set seed. Wind-pollinated in early spring. Irrelevant to a sap crop, which needs no pollination at all.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.