Sugar maple

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Sugar maple fruit

Sugar maple bark

Sugar maple habit

Sugar maple autumn leaves

Sugar maple

Sugar maple flowers

Sugar maple buds

Morphology

Trunk

Erect; bark gray, furrows deep, ridges separating into thick plates; wood tan, hard.

Twigs

Brown, flexible, glabrous; leaf scars U-shaped; pith white to light brown; buds reddish brown, ovoid, .2 to .28 inch, apex acute, scales glabrous.

Leaves

Deciduous, opposite, simple; petiole .16 to .28 inch, glabrous; blade nearly round to ovate in outline, 2.8 to 6 inches long, 3.2 to 6.8 inches wide, base truncate to nearly cordate, symmetric, margins prominently 3-5-lobed, each lobe with 1-4 prominent teeth, apex acute to acuminate, sinuses between principal lobes rounded or U-shaped, 1/3 to 1/2 distance to base, lower surface light green, bluish green, grayish green, whitish green, or yellowish green, glabrous or with tufts of hair in axils of veins, upper surface dark green to green, glabrous.

Flowers

Inflorescences terminal from buds at or near ends of branches, umbel-like racemes, 8-14-flowered; peduncles .4 to .6 inch, glabrous; pedicels 1.6 to 2 inches, sparsely pubescent to lanate. Flowers unisexual, radially symmetric, produced as leaves emerge; sepals 5, connate, yellowish green, equal; calyx .12 to .24 inch, lobes ovate; petals absent; staminate: stamens 5-8, .24 to .28 inch; pistillate: pistil 1; style 1; stigma 2-lobed.

Fruit

August-September; samaras, 2, initially greenish, eventually brown, prominently winged, wings 1 to 1.6 inch, divergent, glabrous; seed 1 per samara, reddish brown, compressed-ovate to compressed-ellipsoid, .2 to .31 inch long,.16 to .24 inch wide, smooth.

Ecology

Habitat

Mesic floodplain and upland forests, rocky north-facing slopes, especially on calcareous soils.

Distribution

East 1/5 of Kansas

Additional Notes