This is a most curious name. It is given twice in 1891, first as 砂糖楓, meaning "Sugar Maple", in the same sense in the West this term is the common name for Acer saccharum. Perhaps the autumn colors were evocative of this maple, or it was simply a marketing gimmick. However, the name is given again in the same list, written 砂糖蛙手; still Satō (sugar), but now with what seems to be an ateji (phonetic spelling) of kaede: "frog-hand", kaeru+te becomes kaede (de from the rendaku). But more interestingly, this ateji has a deeper root: 蛙手, frog's hand, is believed to be the etymological source of the word for maple, perhaps unsurprising given that the webbed hands/feet resemble the palmate leaves of many maples. In this sense, using 蛙手 was a reference to (according to theory) the archaic spelling for maple itself. The character 楓, kaede, maple, is called a kokuji: a character extending into Japanese classical Chinese characters, in this case tree (木) and wind (風). (ED)