Hard maple is often called sugar maple and is the tree most often tapped for maple syrup. The wood is heavy, strong, and tough and used for flooring, cutting boards, countertops and other items that need a hard strong wood. The tree when cut down can become spalted under warm and wet conditions. Spalted wood is wood that was in the process of rotting and had a bunch of fungi in the wood. The fungi made pen-like black lines throughout the wood and resulted in some wild looking figure.