Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is an outstanding tree, one of the best shade and lawn trees, unexcelled for fall colour, can live for 400 years and is the principal source of maple sugar. When you enter a space where Sugar maples live, you immediately feel a cooling effect so profound, that it can’t be explained by the shade alone. Sugar maple have been proven to be uniquely effective at ‘hydraulic lift’, the process whereby water absorbed by their deepest roots, is transferred to their shallow roots and then released into the shallow soils to be shared by companion plants and organisms.

It is the most efficient ground-source cooling system! Sugar maple grows relatively fast and can be tapped for syrup when they reach 25 cm to 30 cm diameter which occurs at 25 to 30 years of age. I have planted hundreds of Sugar maples on laneways and property boundaries that are now large enough to tap. Sugar maple grows on sands, loamy sands, sandy loams, loams silt loams and loose clays. Sugar maple roots are sensitive to flooding and are rarely if ever found in swamps. Our sugar maples are propagated from selected seed sources for stronger healthier trees, unlike the nursery industry which offers only a few patented bud-grafted clones. Vegetatively reproduced clonal trees never grow as large or live as long as a tree grown from seed. Many clones produce very little or no seed and so provide no food for pollinators, diminishing their value in the ecosystem.

Many city streets are now lined with these clones providing no genetic diversity in the face of future unpredictable threats from disease, insects and weather. For best survival and growth in low-maintenance plantings, it is recommended to plant two to three-year-old trees grown from seed.  Fun fact - travelling along some unwidened roads in Southern Ontario today,, you can enjoy the shade and beauty of sugar maples planted in 1880 in the province’s first reforestation program.