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sr73087
10-20-2013, 06:12 PM
So are the two leaves below both from the same species of maple? The bottom one I believe someone on here said awhile ago that it is a red maple, not sure what the top one is.

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lastwoodsman
10-20-2013, 06:31 PM
both Acer rubrum/red maple

DavidSB
10-21-2013, 06:34 PM
Both look like Red Maple, the fine toothed edge is the give away. If you have domestic animals, the red maple in the fall can be poisonous to the animals, like horses, sheep, goats... something about the dying leaf creates arsenic in the leaf. While the leaf is green the sheep can eat it no problem. on a similar note, Mountain Laurel is poisonous too. We've lost sheep to the laurel. The Red maple, I hear, runs for a few weeks, if you have sugar maples like we do, it could run for 6 weeks if the weather is right, and you get more syrup per gallon of sap with the sugar maple. If we get a larger evaporator, we will start tapping the red maples too. A friend that does hundreds of gallons of syrup says he prefers the taste of syrup from reds.

Regards, DavidSB