Acer platanoides

Acer platanoides, the Norway maple, is a deciduous tree in the soapberry family Sapindaceae, native to eastern and central Europe and western Asia from Spain east to Russia, north to southern Scandinavia and southeast to northern Iran. It typically reaches 20 to 30 meters tall with a broad, rounded crown, grey-brown, shallowly grooved bark, and palmately five-lobed leaves 7 to 14 centimeters long and 8 to 25 centimeters across that release a white, milky sap when the leaf stem is broken. Yellow flowers appear in early spring before the leaves, followed by double samaras that spread at nearly 180 degrees; under ideal conditions in its native range the tree can live up to 250 years, though North American specimens often live only about 60 years. It was introduced to northeastern North America as an ornamental shade tree between 1750 and 1760 and later to the Pacific Northwest in the 1870s, and is listed as Least Concern by the IUCN.