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Sugar Maple |  |
What to look for:
 | Find a bare tree with leaves on the ground shaped like the one shown here. There are five kinds of maple common in Minnesota: sugar maple, red maple, silver maple, black maple, and mountain maple. All maples have palmately-veined leaves (shaped like your open hand) and opposite branching. You can be sure the leaf from your tree is a Sugar Maple by checking its shape on this on-line tree key. Report this event when you see that all the leaves have fallen off most of the Sugar Maples. |
Watch in your neighborhood and around school. If your school is participating in the Fall Happenings Curriculum through Wolf Ridge, the first person from your school to report seeing a leafless sugar maple tree can have their name and the date posted in the list at the bottom of this page. If you think you are the first person, ask your teacher to submit your name. They will probably ask you to tell exactly what you saw and where it was.
Where do Sugar Maples grow?
| Sugar maples grow in most of the Fall Happenings forested areas. They are common in the temperate deciduous forests, but occur only occasionally in the coniferous forests of the north near the Canadian border. |  |
How do leaves fall off the trees?
 | Down! OK, there's more to it than that . . . Deciduous trees (trees that lose their leaves each year) keep their leaves as long as it is warm, wet, and sunny enough to keep making food from water, carbon dioxide, and the sun's energy. Leaves start making less food in late summer and fall. Trees have a special way of letting leaves fall off at just the right time. |
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What happens to leaves after they land on the ground?
 | Maple trees are excellent soil builders! The leaves are quickly eaten by insects, worms, and other small animals' in the soil. The animals waste (scat) is broken down further until it is ready for another trip up through the roots of another plant. Maples are know as better than average soil builders because the fall leaves tend to be full of nutrients like calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium. |
Cool Facts
 | Evergreens loose leaves each year too, but they always keep the newer needles, so we don't notice the change as much as on deciduous trees. |
 | The earthworms that help turn the fallen leaves back to soil are aliens - they were brought by people to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. Learn more about earthworms in Minnesota. |
Explore the Web
| Learn about how earthworms are changing maple forests in Minnesota. | ||
| General information about trees | ||
| Follow the screens to identify your tree. | ||
| Young Naturalists article in the Minnesota volunteer. Teacher's Guide available | ||
| From Journey North | ||
| See Wolf Ridge naturalist Kevin Zak's picture-a-day of the same Sugar Maple as it changed color in the fall of 2002. |
Learn more about trees in these Wolf Ridge classes:
Explore the world of plants! Learn about how plants live and grow, why they are so different, and how they are alike. How do plants and animals help each other? Depending on the season, you might also make foods, drinks, perfumes, or dyes from the plants you find. More about our Plant Study class.
You can also take the Trees and Keys class at Wolf Ridge. During Trees and Keys class, you will travel through the trees and keys course, visit trees and see how many you can correctly identify. At the end of class, you will receive a tropical forest tree seed to plant to remind you of the value of maintaining biodiversity.
Hike away from the main Wolf Ridge campus through the woods and across the boardwalks to our Forestry Building outpost. You'll pack a lunch and be gone for the day. During the Forest Ecology class, you'll hike through a variety of managed forests, getting a chance to do some forest management along the way, beginning with a try at an old-time cross cut saw, and ending by taking on the role of a forest, wildlife, recreation, or water management specialist.
Where are the leaves on the ground?