While they often co-occur, sugar and red maple differ in where they “like” to grow.

In the case of these two species, red maple may initially overtop sugar maple but loses the race in the end sugar maples boast an average life span of around 200 years, whereas red maple averages around 80-100. Conversely, red maple, along with trees like yellow birch and red oak, is considered a “mid-tolerant,” capable of tolerating only moderate amounts of shade.īeing more or less shade-tolerant has pros and cons: Less shade-tolerant trees often grow faster than more shade-tolerant trees when sunlight is readily available, but shade-tolerant trees are generally longer-lived. Sugar maple, along with beech and hemlock, is “shade-tolerant,” capable of surviving and even growing under a relatively dense canopy and with little direct sunlight. Foresters often describe trees by “shade-tolerance,” their ability to survive under differing levels of sunlight exposure. The first way that these trees are distinct is in how they grow. These distinctions have real and important implications for our forests and how we manage them.

The bark and leaves of these two trees have stumped plenty of us, leading many to just call them both “maple.” This wouldn’t be such a big deal if both species weren’t so abundant-according to the US Forest Service sugar maple and red maple are the two most prominent tree species in Vermont by volume-and so different these two species grow on different sites in different ways and have different commercial value and applications. It is difficult for many people to distinguish between sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and red maple (Acer rubrum).

New england maple tree types