Fig. 26.—The Sugar Maple.
Value for planting: Grows too rapidly and is too short-lived to be durable.
Commercial value: Its wood is soft, weak, and little used.
Other characters: The bark is light gray, smooth at first and scaly later on. The scales are free at each end and attached in the center. The flowers appear before the leaves in the latter part of March or early April.
Fig. 27.—Tapping the Sugar Maple.
Other common names: The silver maple is sometimes known as soft maple or white maple.