Sugar Maple Print
Sugar Maple Print
Size
12 × 18 in overall, unframed. The plate sits on an ivory sheet with a border of about an inch, so it fits a standard ready-made frame of the same size, with or without a mat.
Printed on 189 g/m² (10.3 mil) enhanced matte paper.
Want it ready to hang? The same plate comes framed in Black or Red Oak.
Flowers, keys and the five-lobed leaf, each numbered and explained.
The print
- The full plate with its name, legend and credits, re-rendered from the source scan at print size, not enlarged from a shirt file.
- Restored from a library scan of the original book; nothing redrawn.
- Keep out of direct sunlight; a frame with glass or acrylic keeps it clean.
Shipping & production
Each print is printed for you after you order, usually within 2–5 business days, and ships on its own (separate from any shirts or framed prints in the same order). Shipping is shown at checkout before you pay.
Returns
If your print arrives damaged or misprinted, contact us within 30 days of delivery with a photo and we'll send a replacement or a refund. Because every print is made to order, we can't accept returns for a change of mind.
Plate 014
From the book
- Species
- Acer saccharum
- As named in the book
- Acer barbatum Michx.; Sugar Maple; Rock Maple.
- Artist
- C. E. Faxon
- Book
- The Silva of North America, vol. II, pl. XC, 1891
“…then unsurpassed in brilliancy of color by any upland tree.”
Then and now
Sargent called it Acer barbatum; the accepted name today is Acer saccharum.
Field notes
Forty gallons of sap for one gallon of syrup.
In 1891 Charles Sprague Sargent wrote a line New Englanders prove every October: the splendor of the northern forest in autumn is due to the sugar maple, "then unsurpassed in brilliancy of color by any upland tree."
The color is chemistry. All summer the yellows and oranges are hidden under green chlorophyll; as the days shorten the green breaks down and they show through. The reds are new, made in autumn from sugars trapped in the leaf. That's why the brightest falls follow sunny days and cold nights.
Sugar is the maple's other fame. In late winter, freezing nights and thawing days push sap up the trunk. It's thin, usually two or three percent sugar, so it takes about forty gallons boiled down to make one gallon of syrup. Faxon drew Sargent's tree part by part, keys and all; Sargent called it Acer barbatum, and the name has settled on Acer saccharum.