Acer 679 
DISTRIBUTION 
The sugar maple is one of the most widely and generally distributed trees 
in Eastern North America. The northern limit of its range on the Atlantic 
coast is Southern Newfoundland. It extends through Canada and the Northern 
States southwards along the Alleghany Mountains to Northern Georgia and 
West Florida, and westward along the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the 
Saguenay, by the shores of Lake St. John and the northern borders of the Great 
Lakes to the Lake of the Woods, and in the United States to Minnesota, Nebraska, 
Eastern Kansas, and Eastern Texas. It is common in all these regions, growing 
especially on rich uplands mixed with ashes and hickories, white oak, wild cherry, 
black birch, yellow birch, and hemlock, and often in the north forming the principal 
part of extensive forests. The undergrowth in some of the forests near the 
northern border of the United States is often composed almost entirely of young 
sugar maples, which grow readily under the dense shade of other trees. The 
type is more prevalent in the north—var. Rugefz and var. zzgra in the central 
States, while var. /eucoderme and var. floridanum appear to be the only forms 
found in the south. 
Much of the splendour of the northern forest in early autumn is due to the 
abundance of the sugar maple, which is then unsurpassed by any other tree in 
brilliancy of colouring, the foliage turning to shades of deep red, scarlet, orange, or 
clear yellow. 
A figure of an unusually large tree, showing the habit which it assumes when 
in the open, is given in Garden and Forest, v. 380 (1892). It grows on the farm of 
Mr. L. Parker, forty-five miles east of Cleveland, Ohio, and measures 134 feet in 
girth at 2 feet from the ground, with very large limbs spreading over an area 100 
feet in diameter. It has been tapped annually without any apparent ill-effects, 
and yields each year three gallons of syrup. Another illustration in Garden and 
Forest, iii. 167 (1890), of a tree exposed on a stony hillside in New Hampshire is 
of a very different type, and shows the habit of an adult tree which has lost the 
narrow upright form of growth it usually has when young.’ 
REMARKABLE TREES 
Though introduced at a very early period (the date is given by Loudon as 
1735, on whose authority we know not), the sugar maple has rarely thriven in 
England, or, so far as we know, in Europe. The reasons for its failure to grow 
in this country are as mysterious as in the case of the white oak, the American 
beech, and other trees of the Eastern States; but it seems a short-lived tree, and 
seldom attains any considerable size. Loudon mentions several trees of no great 
age 20 to 40 feet high, and one at Purser’s Cross which was 45 feet. But none 
of these, so far as we can learn, are now living, and some maples which have 
been reported under this name turn out to belong to other species. We know, 
1 The fastigiate tree, supposed to be of this species, is really 4. rubrum. Cf. p. 672. 
