Definition of "sugar maple" []

• An eastern North American maple tree (Acer saccharum) having sap that is the source of maple syrup and maple sugar and variously grained hard wood used in cabinetmaking. (noun)
• The wood of this tree. Also called hard maple, rock maple. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The sugar-maples, unlike many other flowering trees, do not blossom young; the locusts, amelanchiers, fruit trees generally, etc., blossom when mere shrubs three or four feet high; but the sugar maple and the scarlet maple are good-sized trees before they flower."
• "But the glossy leaves of the maple are more numerous than any others, if we include the whole family, and with the exception of the western or ash-leaved maple, they all grow here, from the fine sugar maple to the dwarf mountain maple: including them all, then, perhaps they number two for one of any other deciduous tree found here."
• "The young buds are coming out beautifully; the tufts of scarlet flowers on the soft maples are now daintily tipped with the tender green of the leaf-buds in their midst, and the long green flowers of the sugar maple have come out on many trees; yesterday, there were none to be seen."