Sugar Maple
Acer saccharum
The classic northern shade tree, loved for its dense crown and brilliant yellow, orange and red fall colour, and the tree behind maple syrup. Give it a lawn or park with room for its roots and moist, well-drained soil. It struggles with heat, drought, road salt and compacted city soil, so keep it away from streets.
- Mature size
- 50 × 37 ft
- 15 × 11.5 m, tall × wide
- Hardiness
- Zones 3a–8b
- USDA
- Sun
- Full sun to part shade
- Water
- Medium to moist
- Fall color
- Oct–Nov
Sugar Maple at its mature size
A mature Sugar Maple grows 40 to 60 feet tall and 30 to 45 feet wide, taller than most people.
Drawn to scale beside a 5 ft 9 in person. With VeraScape, you see it at this size in your own yard.
Typical mature size, unpruned. Sources: Missouri Botanical Garden, Cornell Woody Plants.
Through the year
What Sugar Maple looks like month by month in a typical zone 6–7 garden.
Dormant · Dec–Mar
Bare: dense upright branching to the same oval outline, light gray-brown furrowed bark.
In leaf · Apr–Sep
Dense dark green leaves.
Fall · Oct–Nov
Brilliant blend of orange, golden yellow and red across the crown, intense and glowing.
Photos
Growing Sugar Maple
- Grows well in
- The Northeast and the Midwest.
- Growth rate
- Medium
- Good for
- Specimen, deer resistant, and fall color
- Leaves
- Drops its leaves in winter
- Native to
- Eastern North America and Central North America
Spacing
VeraScape spaces plants so their grown canopies just touch. For Sugar Maple, that’s about 37 ft apart, center to center.
Place a row in your own yard and VeraScape spaces them at their mature width, so you can see whether they’ll crowd the walk.
See Sugar Maple in your yard before you dig
Visualize it at its true size, alongside the rest of your design.
Other maples
Sugar Maple
Autumn Blaze Maple
Red MapleAll drawn to the same scale.