Is Sugar Maple A Hardwood Or A Softwood

Summary to decide whether the sample you re looking at is a hardwood or a softwood look for the presence of vessels pores.

Is sugar maple a hardwood or a softwood.

It is commercially important as a source of maple syrup maple sugar and hardwood lumber useful in furniture manufacture and flooring. Bigleaf maple is moderately hard. The term hardwood and softwood refers to the type of leaves the tree has. Wood from trees with needles or scales is softwood.

The specific gravities of sugar maple and black maple are 0 63 and 0 57 respectively. The most common hard maple is the sugar or rock maple. All of which are hardwoods because maple trees have leaves. Maple is the hardest of those woods.

Oak is a hardwood also but not a dense as maple. Wood from broad leaved deciduous trees is hardwood. Janka ratings for maple range from 700 for silver maple to 1 180 for black maple. Maple trees are one of the most common species of hardwoods in north american forests.

The general designation of hardwood vs softwood is do they shed their leaves in the fall so maple is a hardwood. Now it may look like hard maple is heads and tails above the rest and to a certain extent it is but for reference black cherry has a janka hardness of 950 lb f the same as red maple and black walnut is rated at 1 010 lb f also note that black maple not pictured isn t quite as hard as its close relative hard maple and ranks in the mid range with a hardness of 1 180 lb f. All maples are hardwoods but the species found in america are further classified as hard or soft maples. The maple tree is a member of a group of 200 species of trees and shrubs worldwide that belong to the acer family.

Wikimedia commons coming to the reproductive description in botanical terms softwood trees are gymnosperms whereas hardwood trees are angiosperms the seeds of hardwood trees will have a shell or a fruit. Maple comes in many varieties rock silver sugar hard soft etc. There are an abundance of variations of the maple but they are commonly placed into two categories hard maple and soft maple. Botanical difference between hardwood and softwood gymnosperms and angiosperms image.

This is something to notice but by itself the pore spacing has no diagnostic value. Silver maple red maple and boxelder are soft maples. Typically hard maple is most often known as sugar maple. The wood of soft maple is not as heavy or as strong as that of hard maple.