DCHP-1 Online

sugar maple

• 1 a maple tree, Acer saccharum, found in Canada from Lake Superior eastward and commercially valuable for its hard wood and for its sap, which is used in making maple sugar and syrup; also, its wood.

  See also: curly maple  rock maple  sugar-bush maple  sugar tree   

  • 1796  (1911)  I walked to Major Smiths lot, on which I gathered keys of the sugar maple and partridge berries.
  • 1830  These trees are of the description called rock or sugar-maple, and in the back-settlements have great value in furnishing a luxury which the young settlers would otherwise be unable to procure.
  • 1902  . . . the sap was beginning to flow from the sugar maples. . . .
  • 1956  The sugar maple is one of the most valuable commercial hardwoods in Canada, and is especially desirable where strength and resistance to wear are necessary.

• 2 West, Hist. the Manitoba maple, used for sugar-making by the Indians and fur-traders.

  See also: Manitoba maple  

  • 1820  (1823)  The sugar maple, elm, ash, and the arbor vitae, termed by the Canadian voyagers cedar, grows on various parts of the Saskatchewan.
  • 1887  The Negundo is the "sugar maple" of our Northwest, and sugar is there frequently made from its sap by Indians and others.
  • 1933  Sugar maples were rare as far north as the Swan River, but Monseigneur Tache speaks of a variety of maple peculiar to the country from the sap of which sugar similar to that of sugar maple could be made.