mapuldor

Old English mapuldor (also mapul) has no clear etymology. It appears in glossaries as early as 700 CE, translating Latin acer. The word does not obviously connect to any known root. It may be pre-Germanic. It may be a borrowing from a lost language. The tree was common enough in England that it needed a name; the name's origin was already forgotten.

The maple that changed history was not English but North American. Indigenous peoples of northeastern North America — Algonquin, Abenaki, Haudenosaunee — had tapped sugar maples (Acer saccharum) for centuries before European contact. They taught French colonists the technique in the 1600s. Maple sugar was the primary sweetener in colonial New England before cane sugar imports became affordable.

Canada adopted the maple leaf as its national symbol gradually. The first known use was in 1834, at a St. Jean Baptiste Society meeting in Montreal. The maple leaf appeared on Canadian coins beginning in 1876 and on the national flag in 1965 — designed by George Stanley, inspired by the flag of the Royal Military College. The tree that nobody could etymologize became a nation's identity.

Maple syrup production is concentrated in Quebec, which produces about 70% of the world's supply. The 'Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers' maintains a strategic reserve — literally a warehouse of maple syrup barrels. In 2012, thieves stole 3,000 tons of syrup worth $18.7 million from the reserve. It was called the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist. The tree's product had become valuable enough to steal.