What kind of tree is a maple?

Answer 1

A maple tree is a deciduous (leaves fall off) hardwood tree. It is a member of the same family as acer or sycamore.

Acers are generally, but not exclusively, of an ornamental nature. Japanese acers tend to be smaller and more colourful, such as acer palmatum variegatus which is often red leaved with finely cut leaves.

European members of the family are sycamores with winged seeds and bright green foliage.

Maple is usually the term for north American and Canadian varieties.

all members of the family are deciduous with fine grained near-white wood with a straight grain, birdseye maple has a unique grain pattern caused by sub surface buds that have never sprouted, no one knows why.... fiddleback maple is favoured for musical instruments and is a spectacular pattern caused by certain sawing patterns of branch/trunk nodes.

All maples produce a sugary syrup (sap) that is famed in north America and Canada for its sweetness and a relatively cheap food source (by the time it is shipped to Europe, it is an expensive foodstuff) the syrup is "tapped" from living trees and cooked to produce its brown colour and unique taste.

ALL maples produce this sap but it is normally in very small quantities and not normally edible.

If acer, maple or sycamore are cut for timber and dried in horizontal stacks (like all normal timbers are) it produces a blue stain in the wood, caused by fungus eating the sap.... this makes the timber unusable, so acer sycamore and maple is normally dried vertically. it still produces the blue staining but this is confined to the bottom few inches where the sap settles..... it is easily sawed off and discarded leaving white to creamy or honey white timber.

Maple varnishes well to produce the honey colour we are used to in violins etc.

It can be noted that the ancient Venetians (people of Venice) cured their timber - usually sycamore - in salt water lagoons instead of air dried stacks (there's not much land in Venice but a lot of water) this produces a timber with "closed" pores, whereas air drying gives open pores, and can be found in musical instruments made by Stradivarius and others.

Answer 2

Acer is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple.

There are approximately 129 species, most of which are native to Asia,[4] with a number also appearing in Europe, northern Africa, and North America. Only one species, the poorly studied Acer laurinum, is native to the Southern Hemisphere.[5] Fifty four species of maples meet the International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria for being under threat of extinction in their native habitat.[6]

The word Acer is derived from a Latin word meaning "sharp" (compare "acerbic"), referring to the characteristic points on maple leaves. It was first applied to the genus by the French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in 1700. Since 1965, a stylized maple leaf has been featured on the flag of Canada.[7]

The earliest known fossil maple is Acer alaskense, from the Latest Paleocene of Alaska.

Answer 3

Maple leaves only come from maple trees. Sycamore leaves look nearly identical, and if you need a maple leaf but no maple trees are aound, the sycamore leaf is a good substitute.

Answer 4

pines grom to much taller than maple