This is Acer nigrum 'Green Column'
I think that the black maples are pretty much interchangeable with the sugar maples.
{{gwi:470519}}

A. nigrum is generally said to be more tolerant of wet clay soils than A. saccharum but less so than A. rubrum & saccharinum. It is also more tolerant of higher pH soils than Sugar Maple and of urban conditions (heat, drought, air pollution, etc.)

Black maple is less common, and has a smaller range, so it simply has not been as commonly desired or planted.

Forestfarm does sell small ones by mail-order, however.

I do like them and they are in some ways more interesting than sugar maple, if only for their relative rarity.

They're not native to Maryland (except a small area around Frederick County) AFAIK, but Sugar Maple is.

However, there's one maple that I'm 99% sure is a black maple planted among a bunch of Sugar Maples on a street in my town. It has the thick, droopy, three lobed leaves. The bark is only slightly darker than typical Sugar Maple. The leaves turn later in fall than the surrounding sugars and are an apricot-yellow-orange color. Pretty nice. I drove by it yesterday, it's still 100% green but the surrounding maples are turning orange. Last year, if I remember right, it was green until a few days before November 1.

I'll try to snap a pic.

As a side note, there is also a native stand of black maple about 30 miles from here in Fairfax County, Virginia, along the Potomac. I'd love to collect some seed from those trees one day, if I legally can since I believe they're on NPS or Federal property of some sort.

Sugar Maples have a lot going for them, but they are difficult trees to grow in suburban lots. I've long thought someone should try to cross them with something else and create a hybrid cultivar with more urban tolerance. Would Black Maple be a good candidate?

What is it's zone tolerance? Can it be used for maple syrup?

As mentioned above the native black maples around here (and there are 1000's of them) turn color later, peaking now, vs peaking a couple weeks ago. They also turn a vibrant yellow. The sugar maple turns shades of yellow, orange and/or red. Not the pure yellow of black yellow.

Its well draining, sandy loam with a ph ranging from neutral to slightly alkaline around here.

As far as zone tolerance, it's about the same as sugar maple - generally 4-7b or so, probably OK in 3B with a northern seed source, and 8A if a good location (not too hot, good but not excessive moisture, etc).

Ed, any maple can be used for syruping. It's just down to sugar content, and that is controlled in the end by amount of boiling. Even silver maple is sometimes tapped.

Maybe
i'm biased because of where I live, but sugar maple is just so common, with literally millions of them coming up in the woods in these parts, I'm always thinking-why not just use the local type? But as a plant enthusiast, I can see working with nigra.

BTW, the only place I generally know of where black maple is the dominant type is that portion of Iowa just across the Mississippi from WI, basically, the area around McGregor IA. Unique area-if you don't look closely, you might think you're in N. WI, but everything is just shifted slightly. There's birch, but they're river birch, there's maple, but they're black maple...etc. Quite interesting.

+oM