Check the leaves to avoid accidentally tapping a silver maple tree. The taste has been compared to corn syrup more than anything else. Silver maples don't make the best-tasting maple products due largely to their low sugar content. They have a particularly sweet syrup, and in pristine environments, they can reach 100 years old. They have notably short trunks and only grow up to about 75 feet tall. Boxelders help feed deer, bugs, birds, and other animals. Box Elder (Acer Negundo)ĭid you know that early Native American's used Box Elder trees to make sugar? The box elder is an integral part of its local food chain. Organic red maple products have a much more pronounced maple flavor and have a darker coloring than sugar maple. Red Maples can live up to 80 years and mature in as little as ten years in some cases. Plus, the leaves have three lobes and a V-shaped core. Red Maples can stretch as high as 90 feet and have smooth, light green leaves. Maple trees are loved for many reasons: their bushy canopies provide lots of shade in the summer, they are sturdy trees, and their iconic leaves offer a show in a range of colors throughout autumn. Unlike store-bought, maple syrup has a nuanced taste with hints of caramel and other natural sweeteners. A Look at the Different Kinds of Maple Trees. It can take over 40 years for a sugar maple to mature to a point where it produces syrup. And they have thin, upward-reaching branches. They have dark green leaves that split into five spiky lobes with a U-shaped base. Sugar maples can grow up to 120 feet tall. We make our Brookfield Maple Products and homemade maple syrup from various trees, but if you're interested in making your own, check out the most common maple trees to 'tap' below.

Some of the modern maple trees are pretty similar to their prehistoric counterparts. Today, over 100 different types of maple trees flower and blossom worldwide. They date back to the age of dinosaurs, but we suspect there wasn't a lot of use for syrup back then. But maple trees have been around for over 100 million years. Akita Yatsubusa is a strong and hardy dwarf Acer palmatum with wonderful dark green leaves, very similar to Sharps Pygmy. Maple syrup first hit the record books somewhere around the 1500s. We're going to teach you about the different types of maple trees and the delicious organic maple syrup they produce. Finding the perfect maple syrup to go with breakfast and other meals isn't always easy.

Types of maple leaf trees