Sugar Maple

Vermont State Tree

SugarMapleTreesAutumn.jpg

Sugar maple tree in glorious fall colors

Sugar maple tree in glorious fall colors; photo by  Steven Severinghaus on Flickr (noncommercial use permitted with attribution / share alike)

Official State Tree of Vermont

The sugar maple (Acer saccharum) was designated the state tree of Vermont in 1949. Sugar maple is also the state tree of New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. All State Trees

Sugar Maple Tree Facts

Sometimes called hard maple or rock maple, sugar maple is one of the largest and more important of the hardwoods. Sap from the trunks of sugar maples is used to make maple syrup (maple is also the state flavor of Vermont). Sugar maple trees seldom flower until they are at least 22 years old, but they can also live 300 to 400 years.

Sugar maple tree trunks are tapped early in the spring to collect their sap.The sap is boiled into a syrup, or concentrated further with evaporation to produce maple sugar. 34 gallons of sap are required to produce 1 gallon of maple syrup (or 8 pounds of maple sugar). The leaves of sugar maple trees turn brilliant colors of red and gold in the fall.

Vermont

Images

Sugar maple leaves; photo by Naoko Takano on Flickr (noncommercial use permitted with attribution / share alike).

Sugar maple leaves

Sugar maple tree trunk photo © 2006 Derek Ramsey on Wikipedia, published under terms of Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Brilliant colors from the leaves of one sugar maple tree in the fall - taken from photo of autumn leaves by Chris Glass on Wikipedia - published under Creative Commons License 2.0.

Range of Acer saccharum (sugar maple) in North America (public domain image on Wikipedia).