Acer spp. of the family Aceraceae. Native to North America. "Bird's eye" does not refer to a SPECIES of maple but to a FIGURE of maple, thus the "ssp." as the (NON)specific epithet. It seems to occur predominently in soft maple, specifically sugar maple (acer saccharinum) but the USDA identifies other maples that can also get the figure. These include:
A. campestre
A. rubrum (red maple)
A. mandschuricum (an Asian form of maple)
A. platanoides (Norway maple)
A. pseudoplatanus (harewood; called "sycamore" in England)
Other American species that can also get the figure are, according to the USDA:
white ash (Fraxinus americana)
black walnut (Juglans nigra)
Cuban mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla)
American beech (Fagus grandifolia)
I have also seen it shown, rarely, on cherry, anigre. A very similar figure is found on birch and is called masur birch or karelian birch.
my samples:
These first 3 pics were taken at a lumber yard and represent a nice diversity of the species and also show the mineral stain that is quite common in all hard maple, bird's eye figure or otherwise. These planks all had a reasonable amount of eye figure --- there were other planks that had much less and you'll see examples of such down below.
very small plank
very small plank (flooring maybe? seems a bit thin) and end grain
end grain closeup of the piece directly above. This was VERY badly sanded and needs to be improved.
veneer with eyes that are almost holes in the wood --- usually the eyes are just a tight localized swirl pattern in the wood, but these are mechanically distinguishable by touch from the surrounding wood
veneer with a small amount of curl to it
pale veneer with very sparse eyes
veneer sheet and closeup --- an excellent example of the kind of sparse-eye sheet that you will get from some vendors, who make no distinction between this very poor quality "birdseye" and the "real thing". Technically, this is certainly bird's eye maple, but it should be designated as a "sparse-eye" variety.
veneer with fairly average distribution of eyes
veneer
veneer sheet and closeup --- this one has a very dense eye pattern and demonstrates what vendors SHOULD mean when they say "dense eyes" (what they really sell, however, is frequently a very sparse pattern of eyes, nothing like this dense pattern). Bird's eye maple just doesn't GET much better than this piece. The color of the wood is slightly less pink that what shows here.
veneer with pretty heavy eyes --- the slight green tint isn't really present in the wood
flat cut, quartersawn, end grain
sugar maple (Acer saccharinum, also listed as pin maple) with bird's eye figure from The Wood Book --- one level of enlargement is available for each of the 3 views
web pics --- most of the colors are highly suspect; this wood tends to have the colors shown in my samples
planks
curly planks
veneer
veneer, all from the same vendor
veneer sheet closeups with both levels of enlargement available --- these are from the same vendor as the lot directly above
quilted veneer
veneer sheets showing a nice density and distribution of eyes
veneer showing a mineral stain (a common flaw in all kinds of maple)
