Norwegian maple

Acer platanoides

Acer platanoides, also called the Emerald Queen Maple or the Norway Maple, is a species of maple native to eastern and central Europe and western Asia, from France east to Russia, north to southern Scandinavia and southeast to northern Iran. It was brought to North America in the mid-1700s as a shade tree. It is a member of the family Sapindaceae.

Norway maple sits ambiguously between hard and soft maple with a Janka hardness of 1,010 lbf or 4,500 N. In Europe, it is used for furniture, flooring and musical instruments. This species as grown in the former Yugoslavia is also called Bosnian Maple, and is probably the Maple used by the famous Italian violin makers, Stradivari and Guarneri.

Norway maple has been widely taken into cultivation in other areas, including western Europe northwest of its native range. It grows north of the Arctic Circle at Tromsø, Norway. In North America, it is planted as a street and shade tree as far north as Anchorage, Alaska. During the 1950s–60s it became popular as a street tree due to the large-scale loss of American elms from Dutch elm disease.

It is favored due to its tall trunk and tolerance of poor, compacted soils and urban pollution, conditions in which sugar maple has difficulty. It has become a popular species for bonsai in Europe and is used for medium to large bonsai sizes and a multitude of styles. Norway maples are not typically cultivated for maple syrup production due to the lower sugar content of the sap compared to sugar maple.