Domestic Figured Curly Sugar Maple

Acer saccharum

Sugar Maple wood has a generally straight grain but variations such as birdseye, tiger, flame, curly, wavy, rippled or fiddleback grain can occur. Referred to as “figured” these grain characteristics usually result from some strain, injury, or disease in the tree as it grows.  Curly Maple has a unique rippled effect. Figured wood can also take on an illusion called chatoyancy As an lighter and more luminescent accent occurs within the pattern making it pop! Figuring can occur in other types of trees such as walnut and birch.
Also known as Hard Maple or Rock Maple, this tree boasts extremely hard wood. With a Janka rating of 1450 it surpasses most other hardwoods. The blonde tone and unique varying grain patterns make it highly sought after for both beauty and strength.  The trees are native to the hardwood forests of the Eastern United States and Canada. They can grow to be 75 feet tall with a spread of 50 inches, and can live to be 400 years old! Many of us know their distinctive fruits as "helicopters", or "whirlybirds" but are actually called samaras. A mature tree will produce seeds in abundance supporting a myriad of forest dwellers. We love to gobble up this tree’s bounty too. Sugar Maples are the top producer of a favorite human staple. Early explorer journals tell us Native Americans were making maple syrup as early as 1609. Drawn from the tree through a process called tapping, the sap is boiled down to the sweet syrup, though it takes 40 gallons of sap to create just 1 gallon of maple syrup.