Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

The French word érable is a maple in English.  Trees are of the Aceraceae (sapindaceae) family which include about 100 species, of which about 20 are found in North America.  The most common are Manitoba maple, Acer negundo, or érable à  Giguère in French, whose leaves resemble those of the ash tree; the sugar maple, Acer saccharum, also called hard maple – source of our famous maple syrup and familiar leaf; the striped maple, Acer pensylvanicum, which in French also bears the curious name of bois d'orignal (literally moose wood or moose maple); the silver maple, Acer saccharinum, whose sap is neither as sweet nor as plentiful as that of the sugar maple (in French, l'érable argenté is also called plaine blanche); the red maple, Acer rubrum, commonly called soft maple or swamp maple, plaine or plaine rouge in French.  Acer spicatum, or mountain maple, falls into the same category of soft maples; and these are commonly referred to in French as plaine bâtarde or bastard maples.  Acer nigrum, or black maple, is known widely in the United States and found in the Montreal area of Quebec.  Finally, we also have the Acer platanoides, or Norway maple, which is an introduced tree from Europe, but now considered a naturalized species, successfully reproducing itself here.