The Savory Sugar Maple.

The aptly named sugar maple (Acer saccharum) is the primary source of the sweet sap used to make maple syrup and maple sugar. In the furniture and woodworking industry, where this tree also is a major player, it's often called hard maple, rock maple, curly maple, or bird's-eye maple. Plant it in the right conditions, and the sugar maple makes one of the best shade trees around for residential yards and gardens. All in all, it's a great tree.

The sugar maple made its mark in the Northeast in the 1600s when the first settlers learned the art of maple sugaring from Native Americans.

Various types of maples grow throughout the United States, but some are better suited to certain areas than others. The sugar maple falls in that category. The dominant tree in the deciduous forests of the Northeast, it can be found as far as the Mississippi River in the northern Midwest. It's a testament to the species' value and popularity that it was selected the state tree for Vermont, New York, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Sugar maples commonly share the forest with ironwood, beech, basswood, white ash, black cherry, yellow birch, white pine, and red oak. But as the forests grow older, the sugar maple's growth habits often make it the predominant species.

ABOUT SUGAR MAPLES

Sugar maples can grow from 75 to 100 feet or more with a circumference of 2 to 3 feet. When they grow in the open, their trunks are shorter with a rounded crown of many branches. A slow grower, it may take sugar maples 100 years to grow 60 feet. The trees have a dense, upright oval to round crown with a broad spread that stretches at least as wide as the tree stands tall.

Its 3- to 5-inch leaves are palm-shaped with five deeply indented lobes, or points. Relatively large, the leaves are a dull light green with a paler underside during growing season. But come autumn, sugar maples take center stage in the annual "fall colors" show. The leaves turn vibrant shades ranging from clear yellow to golden orange to orangish-red, providing a jaw-dropping display that can last until mid-October. New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and parts of New England take advantage of this magnificent display by promoting fall color tours as tourist attractions.

Sugar maple flowers are pale yellow-green and small, 1/5- to 1/2-inch long, with five tiny petals. They appear in clusters or loose sprays before the leaves emerge in April or May.

The flowers are not very memorable, but the seeds certainly are. Who hasn't "flown" the propeller-like winged seeds or split the seed and attached it to the end of his or her nose? Cool stuff for a 6-year-old.

Those winged seeds store enough energy to take root in a thick layer of partially decomposed leaves. Because of its tolerance to shade, sugar maples are among the few seedlings that grow well in the dense shade of a maple forest--also called a "sugar bush"--contributing to its dominance in many areas.

Sugar maple twigs are reddish-brown, hairless, and glossy, with sharp-pointed buds that lie opposite each other along the twig. The gray bark breaks up into long, firm, vertical strips that lift up on one side only, one way to distinguish the tree from red, sliver, or Norway maple. Under a forest canopy the trunk rises straight and free of branches for more than half its height.

The sapwood, frequently 3 to 4 inches thick, is white with a reddish tinge. The heartwood color is uniformly light reddish-brown. The straight-grained, fine-textured wood is hard and strong. Weighing in at a hefty 44 pounds per cubic foot, it's as heavy as red oak. Some trees produce spectacularly grained wood in curly, fiddleback, quilt, and bird's-eye designs that are treasured by fine furniture makers. This phenomenon is caused by a fungus that feeds on the cells under the bark, causing numerous depressions in the wood and thus creating this visual bird's-eye effect so much in demand for use in veneers.

IN THE LANDSCAPE

In the proper setting, sugar maples make wonderful home landscape trees. They have lovely form, beautiful bark, and provide elegant, soft shade. Planted on the south or southwest side of your home, their lush leaf canopy will shade the roof, cooling interior temperatures in the summertime. In the winter foliage-free branches allow the sun to reach the roof and warm the home.

Before planting sugar maples, make sure you have the space to accommodate their mature size. Plant them singly as specimens in spacious lawns or in groups to showcase their striking autumn foliage. Keep in mind that the roots of a healthy, mature sugar maple can extend twice the diameter of the crown, so plant the tree at least 50 (preferably 100) feet away from the street. That's also important because of their sensitivity to road salt. Sugar maples won't tolerate "wet feet" or extreme drought, so look for good drainage and access to irrigation.

Wildlife is fond of sugar maples, which provide an important food source for deer, squirrels, rabbits, mice, and many bird species that feed on their bark, buds, twigs, and fruit. All well and good out in the forest, hut in the borne landscape guard against deer stripping the bark, or mice and voles gnawing at the bark.

PLANTING TIPS

Maples grow best in full sun but tolerate light sbade. They prefer well-drained soil that is acid to neutral (pH 5.5 to 7.0) but will accept almost any soil as long as it is kept slightly moist and drains well. You can plant young sugar maples with root halls wrapped in burlap (balled and burlapped) in spring or fall, but early spring remains the best time. Container-grown trees can be planted almost any time during the season.

After planting, spread a 2- to 3-inch layer of organic mulch, such as bark chips, on the soil over the rootball to help maintain soil moisture and enrich the soil as it gradually decomposes. Do not fertilize until the second year. Allow an open space a minimum of 20 feet in diameter around the sapling so it won't be crowded as it matures.

CARE

Water newly planted trees well over their first season while they become established. Water established trees deeply every week or 10 days in periods of severe drought or if they are in poor soil. If water restrictions during these periods permit, run a sprinkler or drip system for 20 to 30 minutes each time. Mulch the soil well to help absorb runoff and to block evaporation of moisture. After their first year feed young maples annually for four or five years.

In the fail, sprinkle all-purpose slow-acting granular fertilizer on the soil under the tree out 1 or 1-1/2 feet beyond the tips of the branches, referred to as the drip line. Use about one-half pound of fertilizer for each 1/2-inch diameter of the trunk, measured at its base.

Over many years a mulched tree will get nutrients from the decomposing mulch over its root zone, eventually making annual fertilization unnecessary. Do not add fertilizer when planting a tree or over its first season.

Maples generally need little pruning, other than to remove root suckers and dead wood or branches that cross or grow too low. Since maples bleed when cut, avoid pruning in the spring when the sap is running. Once the tree is fully mature, any serious pruning tasks should be performed by a professional arborist.

LUMBER

You'll see sugar maple wood in bowling-lane surfaces, bowling pins, cutting blocks, flooring, school desks (I remember it being hard to cut initials in a maple desk), tool handles, and ladder rungs. Furniture built during the "Early American" period contains a lot of sugar maple, and it's still a species of choice in fine furniture today. Maple wood also is used for casks, drum sticks, sounding boards, xylophones, and many other products. Fiddleback sugar maple has always been popular for the backs of stringed instruments, such as violins. Those with a fireplace or wood stove may count sugar maples among your favorites for home heating because they produce a large amount of heat but burn slowly, leaving little ash residue.

MAKING MAPLE SYRUP

You can make syrup from silver or red maple, box elder, and even birch trees, but sugar maples are the most effective choice for sweet sap. In New England, the northern Midwest, and Canada, where sugar maples are numerous, farmers and syrup producers tap into their trunks to drain the sap in the late winter and early spring when it starts to run. I recently moved to a 20-acre property in central Michigan with many sugar maples, so I'm planning to try making my own syrup in the spring. In my studies I learned some trees produce sweeter sap than others, but there's no way to predict that ahead of time. Sugar content is determined by both genetic and physical characteristics.

You probably already know that you get syrup by reducing sap during prolonged boiling. But did you know about 40 trees are needed to produce enough sap for one gallon of syrup? Some rules to live by: Don't tap trees smaller than 10 inches in diameter; it's OK to put two taps in a tree more than 18 inches-- three in a tree more than 28 inches. Be careful: Tapping can damage trees.

To produce about 40 gallons of sap in a normal season, you need about five taps. I'm going to find five or six good-sized trees and give it a try.

So with a handy reference book (Rink Mann's Backyard Sugarin'), some advice from a good neighbor who has been "sugarin" for a few years, and some luck, I'll he using syrup next year that will have cost no more than two or three times what it would at the store. Expensive, but it'll be all mine.

Jeff Ball appears on NBC'S Today Show" as a gardening expert and writes books and articles on gardening. He also writes online for yardener com.