In our area Black Maple is the Sweetest tree, however they can fool you, what I thought was a black maple was a sugar and thirty feet away what I thought was a Sugar was a black maple, Tim Wilmot was at my camp 3 to 4 years ago doing a 3/16 tubing seminar, he got me straighten out, I was completely fooled by the black bark, Black bark tree had typical sugar maple leaves, the gray bark tree had the black maple leaves.
Before Tim left West Virginia I when into my woods and found a sapling, dug it up and gave it to him to take home to Vermont, hopefully it was a Black Maple, had the leaf pattern of a Black maple.
Mark 220 Maple