Q&A: How climate change is impacting the maple syrup industry

In the depths of winter, sugar on snow is a yearly treat many Vermonters eagerly anticipate. But with winters warming and snow barely on the ground in some parts of the state, climate change presents a host of challenges ...

NZ maple syrup mission taps into hi-tech imaging

A Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury (UC) team has spent the last two years investigating whether it's viable to produce maple syrup at scale within Aotearoa New Zealand, and trial plantations have been ...

page 1 from 8

Maple

Acer (pronounced /ˈeɪsər/) is a genus of trees or shrubs commonly known as maple.

Maples are variously classified in a family of their own, the Aceraceae, or together with the Hippocastanaceae included in the family Sapindaceae. Modern classifications, including the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system, favour inclusion in Sapindaceae. The type species of the genus is Acer pseudoplatanus (Sycamore maple).

There are approximately 129 species, most of which are native to Asia, with a number also appearing in Europe, northern Africa, and North America. Only one species, the poorly studied Acer laurinum, is native to the Southern Hemisphere. Fifty four species of maples meet the International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria for being under threat of extinction in their native habitat.

The word Acer derives from a Latin word meaning "sharp" (compare "acerbic"), referring to the characteristic points on maple leaves. It was first applied to the genus by the French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort in 1700. The earliest known fossil maple is Acer alaskense, from the Latest Paleocene of Alaska.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA