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

That's not the right leaf, botanists say.
Bank of Canada
That's not the right leaf, botanists say.

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

The Canadian flag and its familiar leaf.
/ Canadian Heritage
/
Canadian Heritage
The Canadian flag and its familiar 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, . "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 that the image is a "stylized blend" of the various maples that grow in the country.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.