(And just as citizens of both the east coast and the west coast each like to assert the superiority of their own respective region, there is almost a rivalry between bigfleaf maple advocates on the west coast, and red maple fans on the east coast.) For instance, if you live in Oregon, the soft maple that you buy (if it has been harvested locally) will likely be bigleaf maple, while those living in the eastern United States may actually be buying red maple or silver maple. floridanum, respectively.ĭepending on where you live, different species might be sold as soft maple. But these species are far less commonly seen commercially, and they are both so closely related to hard maple that some even consider them to be sub-species of the same tree, classifying them as Acer saccharum subsp. Besides this one species of maple, the only other species that are sometimes considered in the grouping of hard maple in the United States are black maple (Acer nigrum) and Florida maple (Acer floridanum). Hard maple is also known as rock maple or sugar maple, (this is the same tree which is tapped to get maple syrup). Hard Maple, on the other hand, typically refers to one specific type of maple species: Acer saccharum. The term “soft maple” is merely used to differentiate these species from hard maple. The term “soft maple” does not refer to any specific species of maple, but rather, it’s a broad term which includes several different species of maple. Perhaps you’ve seen a type of lumber for sale known as “soft maple,” and were wondering: what’s the difference between between this Soft Maple and Hard Maple? Just how soft is it? Why does it cost about half as much as Hard Maple? How can I tell the two apart?

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