Q&A for How to Identify Sugar Maple Trees

The leaves' lobes have distinctly pointed tips. They also turn starkly yellow, red or orange in the fall.

According to the USDA any maple tree sap can make syrup, but silver maple sap is extremely watery and red maple sap has a strong flavor. They recommend tapping mostly sugar maple, and adding red maple to create a more caramel taste. Silver maple can taste bitter late in the season, so it isn't as useful.

Start tapping when the temperatures at night are below freezing (32 degrees F), and the daytime temperatures are above freezing. A larger swing in temperature differences (say, 20 degrees at night, to 40+ during the daytime) will often be beneficial, as it causes a sort of "pumping" action as the sap travels up and down in the tree. The best time to start varies, as the temperature swings vary from year to year. Be ready when your forecast indicates the above mentioned differences. Some dates have been as early as late January to mid February, through as late as mid April; just have your taps, tubing, collection containers, and cooking equipment ready to go, and have fun!

Yes. If the seeds fall in fertile soil and receive enough water, they will grow into more sugar maples.

Not all maple trees are sugar maple trees. There are also red maple and silver maple trees. All have very similar characteristics but some differences as well. For example, sugar maples have the above looking-like leaves, while red maple have the lobes a bit narrower, and silver maple have five notable lobes.

There are many types of maple trees, but only one sugar maple. All maple trees produce sap which contains sugar, and most can be used to make syrup, but the sugar maple is considered the best for syrup production.

You may be describing the fruit of a red maple. More information would aid in identification: are the fruit paired together in a "horseshoe" shape; what are the dimensions of the seeds and their "wings"?

You may be describing a Japanese maple. These are small maple trees that can have vividly colored leaves during the fall, and whose leaves can come in a variety of patterns. More information would make tree identification easier - how many lobes are on the leaf, are the edges ;serrated or smooth; what color is the underside of the leaf?

There are over 100 species of maple trees, including the Norway, sugar, Japanese, red, and field.

They will get 80 to 15 feet tall and, exceptionally, up to 148 feet. A 10 year-old sugar maple should be about 16 feet tall.

Maple tree roots require oxygen, that is why they grow out of the ground. Cutting them will both harm the tree and trigger it to grow more roots.

The sap of the maple tree has natural sugar, as do most plants. This gives the sweet taste to maple syrup. However, it takes almost 10 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup, so the sap has to be well-condensed to bring out the sweetness.

Yes, but the flavor can be bitter in some and have less sugar than others.

They can be depending on environmental factors like temperature or a lack of rain.

Seedlings don't have bark, but at a few years old, the tree should have the same bark texture as the others.

25%. Trim January through March so the tree can self-heal. Just trim it to your property line or back a few feet so you can trim every 3 years or so.

The leaves would be the best bet in this case. If it is a sapling that hasn't shown fruit yet there is a danger of misidentifying it, as the invasive Norway maple has a very similar leaf. The sugar maple has a horseshoe shaped wing Samara, while the Norway Samara (seed/fruit) exhibit wings that form perpendicular in relation to the classic horseshoe shape of the sugar maple.

You can plant them in the ground pretty much anywhere as long as the area gets enough sunlight and water.

Sugar maples can drop flowers, seeds and leaves. The flowers are yellow and drop as the leaves get larger in size.

Yes. How early or late a tree grows leaves varies from tree to tree, even within the same species.

Pruning should be done in late winter or early spring. Pruning maple trees during the dormant season will help your trees with new growth in the spring when they bloom. You can also prune in the summer if you want to slow the growth of certain branches.

Yes, all these trees can be tapped without harm. A maple tree must be at least 10 inches in diameter at 3 feet to tap. If you have maple trees 10-20 inches in diameter, you can use 1 tap. If you have maple trees 20-25 inches in diameter, you can use 2 taps. If the diameters are above 25 inches, you can use 3 taps. Three taps is the limit.