![]() ![]() The bigleaf maple is the tallest maple in North America, reaching over 30 m (100 ft) in some areas. Giant leaves are not its only distinctive feature. The young bark is smooth and grayish-brown, eventually becoming red-brown and deeply fissured with age. Its leaves and branches grow in an opposite formation, and spread into a domed canopy at maturity. ![]() These goliath photosynthesizers measure up to 30 cm (12 in) wide and almost as long, a singular feature that distinguishes the bigleaf maple from others in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae (though some still place it in Aceraceae). True to its name, it dangles unusually large, 5-lobed, palmate (palm-shaped) leaves from its branches. If your spiles do not come with hooks you will need to buy some separately.The bigleaf maple ( Acer macrophyllum), also known as the Oregon maple, is a deciduous, long-lived tree native to the Pacific Northwest. You can get the spile and the bucket and lid from your local hardware store, farm store or sometimes local sugar bushes might have some available for sale. For this tool kit, you will need a drill, a maple spile with a hook, a hammer, a sap bucket and bucket lids. You will need a certain set of tools to successfully tap a maple tree, let’s call it your maple tool kit. Maple syrup season ends when the buds on the branches begin to open leaving any sap collected after that point with a bitter aftertaste. Maple syrup season typically takes place between February and April when daytime temperatures reach above 0℃ followed by cold nights which is when the sap starts to flow. The tree must be a minimum of 25.4+ centimetres in diameter for you to put one tap in, 45 cm for two taps, and 60 cm for three taps. To tell if a maple tree is mature you can look for the rough bark and measure the diameter of the tree at about shoulder length. Maple trees need to be mature before you can remove sap without harming the tree, much like how humans need to be a certain age before giving blood. A few things you should be aware of before tapping a tree is how old the tree needs to be, the temperature, and what tools you will need. Once you have successfully identified a maple tree it is time to tap it to access that delicious sap. A young maple’s bark will be stone-gray and very smooth, while a mature maple will have furrowed bark with large flat scales that seem to vertically peel off of the tree. Identifying a maple tree by its bark is a bit trickier as there is some variation between a young sugar maple and a mature one. This means the tree’s branches will grow in opposite directions making it easy for you to tell that it is a maple tree. ![]() If you look closely you will see each pair of buds is rotated about 180 degrees from the previous set, which helps keep the tree in balance when the buds become branches. ![]() Maple trees are unique as they are one of the few trees with opposite leaf buds. While at first it might be hard to tell the difference, maple trees have two very distinguishing features: the bark and the branching patterns. Most Canadians know how to identify a maple tree just by looking at the leaves for that unique maple shape, but how can you tell which tree is a maple tree once all of the leaves are gone? ![]()
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