The Bank of Canada may have a cool new-fangled plastic banknote, but spot-checkers missed one very important foliage fact. Instead of using the beloved sugar maple leaf, the bills are emblazoned with Norway’s version, say botanists.
The sugar maple, appearing on Canada’s cherished national flag, was accidentally left off the new currency, and the Norway maple set in its place.
The not-so-sweet maple leaf makes its dubious debute on Canada’s new $20, $50 and $100 bills.
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“The maple leaf (on the currency) is the wrong species,” said Sean Blaney, a botanist for the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Center in New Brunswick.
Apparently, the Norway maple has more spines or lobes and has a more pronounced and pointed outline than the sugar maple, and the lobe that rises in the center is shorter than the sugar maple.
The Norway maple is no stranger to Canada, after being imported from Europe it is probably the most popular tree along streets in central and eastern Canada.
“It has naturalized to Canada,” Blaney said. But it’s not the grand sugar maple.
The BOC has made no immediate plans to commission designers to correct the banknotes.
The costly mistake comes on the heels of another faux pas back in August when Bank officials were forced to apologize after they replaced the picture of an Asian man on its new C$100 banknote with a woman who looked more Caucasian.