Medicinal Monday...Mountain Maple

Not the tallest of trees, Acer Spicatum Lam is native to northeastern North America including in  Connecticut's higher elevations. It has a number of interesting medicinal as well as decorative uses, making this small shrub-like tree useful as well as interesting.

About Mountain Maple

Acer Spicatum Lam is a deciduous shrub or small tree that grows from Saskatchewan to Newfoundland, south to Pennsylvania, and in the high elevations of the southern Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia. This tree grows in moist woods in rich, well-drained soils, on rocky hillsides, and along streams.  It seldom grows to more than thirty feet high and tends to grow in clumps that form dense thickets. The bark is reddish brown to gray, and it is thin and somewhat furrowed.  The twigs are hairy, green, red, or brownish red and the pith is brown. The leaves are opposite, three-lobed, hairy, and have coarse teeth and deeply sunken veins. It usually flowers in June after the leaves are fully formed. The blossoms are greenish-white to yellow and grow in long cylindrical spike-like clusters. The fruit is a pair of winged seeds called samaras that are pink when young and turn brown in the fall.

Medicinal and Decorative Uses

There are several interesting decorative uses for this tree. The bark, for example, was used to make a rose-tan-colored dye, and the wood was used to make arrows. The leaves were used as designs for bead and applique work by many Native American communities including the Menominee and Ojibwa. The Ojibwa also used the roots of this tree to make the bowl for the dice and bowl game. The Potawatomi also used the leaves as a pattern for bead and applique work and would burn deer antlers until they turned to charcoal and used this to rub against the backs of the leaves. This surface was then placed on birch bark until the pattern of the leaves emerged, forming a pattern for the beadwork.

Medicinally, one of the most common uses was to make an infusion or poultice of the outside bark to treat sore eyes. The Algonquin made a poultice of boiled root chips and used it as a dermatological aid to treat wounds and abscesses.  The Iroquois made a compound decoction of the roots and bark and took this mixture to treat internal hemorrhages and as a gastrointestinal aid. The Potawatomi made a compound mixture containing the bark of this tree and took it to relieve coughing. The sap is a source of sugar and can be boiled to make maple syrup. 

Did You Know?

The wood of this tree is close-grained, soft, light, and not used commercially.

Acer is the Latin word for maple, and spicatum means spike bearing.

It is also referred to as Moose Maple because in the winter this animal eats it. It is also the preferred food of the whitetail deer.

The name Lam is a reference to French biologist, Jean-Batiste Lamarck, who died in 1829.

The Mountain Maple is distinguished from the Sugar Maple by the shape of the leaves. Sugar Maples have five lobes and the edges are smooth, in contrast to the Mountain Maples leaves that have coarse teeth. Also, the flowers grow differently and the Sugar Maple is a much taller tree.