Sugar Maple Tree Information
Images of Sugar Maple:
Sugar Maple grows in the following 36 states and provinces:
Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Manitoba, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, WisconsinInformation about Sugar Maple:
The Acer Saccharum is commonly known as the Hard Maple, Rock Maple as well as Sugar Maple.
The currently accepted scientific name of sugar maple is Acer saccharum Marsh. Sugar maple is highly variable genetically and taxonomic controversy abounds. Some taxonomists recognize two to six varieties, but others recognize these entities as forms or subspecies . Several ecotypes or races, each exhibiting clinal variation, have also been delineated . Florida maple (A. barbatum), chalk maple (A. leucoderme), and black maple (A. nigrum) hybridize and intergrade with sugar maple and are often included in the sugar maple complex . Some authorities recognize these taxa as subspecies of sugar maple , but most delineate them as discrete species. Sugar maple hybridizes with red maple (A. rubrum) in the field, and with bigleaf maple (A. macrophyllum) under laboratory conditions . Acer X senecaense Slavin is a hybrid derived from an A. leucoderme x sugar maple cross . A. skutchii is closely related to sugar maple and is treated as a subspecies by some taxonomists .Sugar maple grows from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick westward to Ontario and Manitoba, southward through Minnesota, and eastern Kansas into northeastern Texas . It extends eastward to Georgia and northward through the Appalachian Mountains into New England . Local populations occur in northwestern South Carolina, northern Georgia, and northeastern South Dakota . Disjunct populations are known from the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma .Sugar maple grows in a wide variety of plant communities throughout eastern North America. It is a dominant or codominant in many northern hardwood and mixed mesophytic communities. Common codominants include beech (Fagus grandifolia), birch (Betula spp.), and American basswood (Tilia americana). Sugar maple has been listed as a dominant or indicator in the following community type (cts), ecosystem associations (eas), dominance types (dts), and plant association (pas) classifications: Area Classification Authority s IL forest cts Fralish 1976 e IA forest dts Cahayla-Wynne & Glenn- Lewin 1978 MI forest eas Pregitzer & Ramm 1984 MN forest cts Daubenmire 1936 s NY forest pas Wilm 1936 Some of the information provided here is attributed to:Tirmenstein, D. A. 1991. Acer saccharum. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). , available at the USDA Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) website