Whoa Canada! New Currency Has 'Wrong' Maple Leaf?

A hubbub's been building up north for the past week or so about the maple leaf on Canada's new $20 bills.

Botanists say, as the CBC reports, that it's a leaf from the invasive Norway maple, not the familiar sugar maple that turns nice and red in the fall and graces the nation's flag. The clue: the leaf on the bill has five major lobes, not the three you see on the flag's red leaf.

"It's rather sad. It's not the first time that it's happened," Julian Starr, a botany professor at the University of Ottawa, tells Toronto's Globe and Mail. "It's almost Canadian in the fact that we can't even get our symbols right."

Asked about what happened, eh, the Bank of Canada tells New Scientist that the image is a "stylized blend" of the various maples that grow in the country.

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