Right before I left, my friends and I stopped at Centennial Woods for this assignment. While searching for one of the four tree species, we consistently found lookalikes. It wasn’t until we found a true red maple that I even realized the sugar maple we looked at earlier wasn’t a red.
This was a bud from the red maple I identified. The bark of the twig is a dark reddish brown. The buds are rounded and plump, as opposed to the sharply pointed buds of a sugar maple. The buds are also a deep red, whereas they are brown on a sugar maple. Since it’s winter, leaves and flowers were not comparable, but the buds were enough to confirm the species.