How to Distinguish Hard Maple From Soft Maple Trees

Hard maple leaves resemble the leaf on the Canadian flag.

Woodworkers separate maple wood into "hard" and "soft" based on the way it performs when they work with it, but the difference applies to more than the wood. The sugar maple, the most common hard maple, produces maple sugar as well as hard, dense wood for carpenters. The fast-growing silver maple and the colorful red maple, both classified as soft maples, are useful as ornamental trees, though their sap has less sugar. All soft maples, including the box elder, produce lighter-weight wood that's easier to work than hard maple.

Instructions

1. Examine the leaves. The two hard maples, sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and black maple (Acer nigrum), have leaves with the areas between the lobes shaped like a "U." The most common soft maple, the red maple (Acer rubrum), has the area shaped like a "V." Another soft maple, the silver maple (Acer saccharinum), is "U"-shaped between the lobes, but it's more deeply cut between the lobes, unlike the sugar maple, whose leaf looks like the leaf on the Canadian flag. The box elder (Acer negundo), also a soft maple, is easy to distinguish by its leaves, since it has three to nine completely separate leaflets rather than a lobed leaf.

2. Look for the flowers in early spring. Hard maples and some soft maples have greenish-colored flowers, not easy to notice. Red maples have red flowers, so any maple with red flowers is a soft maple.

3. Watch when the seeds fall. All maples produce winged seeds, but only hard maples' seeds mature and fall in autumn. The seeds of two soft maples, the red and silver, ripen and fall in the spring. Box elder, another soft maple, holds onto its seeds all summer and over the winter.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have access to the wood, try to dent it with your fingernail. If you can dent it easily, it's probably soft maple. Hard maple is difficult to dent, especially after it's dry. Hard maple wood is also heavier than soft maple wood.

References

• University of Minnesota Extension: Identifying Maple Trees for Syrup Production
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Plants Database: Acer Nigrum (Black Maple)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Plants Database: Acer Saccharum (Sugar Maple)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Plants Database: Acer Saccharinum (Silver Maple)
• U.S. Department of Agriculture Plants Database: Acer Rubrum (Red Maple)
• "Native Trees, Shrubs, & Vines"; William Cullina; 2002

Resources

• Iowa State University Extension: Forestry Extension Notes -- Wood Identification
• The University of Tennessee: Wood Identification for Hardwood and Softwood Species
• "American Woodworker"; Wood Facts -- Maple; Dick Boak; November-December 1992