Acer saccharum

Sugar maple is in the soapberry or Sapindaceae family and is native to the hardwood forests of eastern Canada, from Nova Scotia to Quebec and southern Ontario and southeastern Manitoba and then down to the northern parts of the Central and eastern United States. It is best known for the production of maple syrup.

Acer grandidentatum is closely related to sugar maple and is treated as a subspecies of it by some botanists, as Acer saccharum subsp. grandidentatum.

The maple leaf on the Canadian flag most resembles a sugar maple.

• Leaves are opposite, simple, up to 20 cm long and equally wide, with five palmate lobes. The basal lobes are relatively small, while the upper lobes are larger and deeply notched. Fall color is often spectacular, ranging from bright yellow through orange to fluorescent red-orange.
• Flowers are yellow-green, small, clustered, hanging from slender stems.
• Fruit is a pair of samaras 3–4 cm long, somewhat square horseshoe shaped.
• Sugar maple is also often confused with the Norway maple, though they are not closely related within the genus. The sugar maple has clear sap in the leaf petiole (the Norway maple has white sap), brown, sharp-tipped buds (the Norway maple has blunt, green or reddish-purple buds), and shaggy bark on older trees. Norway maples also occasionally have petioles that are 1 ½ times the length of the leaf, not this long in sugar maples.