Acer - Maple Magic

Maples include low, spreading shrubs, ornamental small trees and forest giants. “Acer” (a’-sir) the original Latin word for Maple. This also includes 200 Northern Hemisphere species. The name ‘Acer’ means ‘sharp’ in reference to the pointed teeth on Maple leaves. Larger North American and European Maples are valued timber trees. It is known as a ‘hard’ wood with a lovely grain that is highly prized.

The wood is traditionally used to make bowling pins and alley lanes, billiard cue shafts, baseball bats, butcher blocks, chairs and seats, benches and tables. Its wood has a special resonant quality called ‘tone wood’ which makes it ideal to use in the making of many musical instruments. Chinese and Japanese Maples are smaller and more decorative. There are evergreen and deciduous species with attractive, diverse foliage often producing dramatic and vivid colour changes in Spring and especially through Autumn sometimes even into Early Winter.