ACERACE^ 



629 



in the staminate and included in the pistillate flower, and orange-colored anthers; 

 ovary hoary-tomentose, reduced in the staminate flower to a minute point; styles 

 united at the base only; stigmas long and exserted. Fruit fully grown by the 1st 

 of July and ripening late in the autumn; carpels covered with long pale hairs, their 

 wings 1^' long, ^' wide, slightly divergent and glabrous with the exception of a few 

 hairs on the thickened edge; seeds dark-colored, rugose and pitted, ^' long. 



A tree, 80-100 high, with a tall straight trunk 2-3 in diameter, stout often 

 pendulous branches forming a compact handsome head, and stout branchlets smooth 

 and pale green at first, becoming bright green or dark red in their first winter, 

 covered more or less thickly with small longitudinal white lenticels, and in their sec- 

 ond summer gray or grayish brown. Winter-buds obtuse; terminal ^' long, with 

 sl^ort broad slightly spreading dark red ciliate outer scales rounded on the back, 

 those of the inner ranks green and foliaceous, and at maturity 1^' long, colored and 

 puberulous; axillary buds minute. Bark of the trunk ^'-f thick, brown faintly 

 tinged with red or bright reddish brown, deeply furrowed and broken on the surface 

 into small square plate-like scales. Wood light, soft, not strong, close-grained, rich 



brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored often nearly white sapwood of 

 60-80 layers of annual growth; more valuable than the wood produced by other 

 deciduous trees of western North America, and in Washington and Oregon largely 

 used in the interior finish of buildings, for furniture, and for axe and broom-handles. 



Distribution. Banks of streams or on rich bottom-lands or the rocky slopes of 

 mountain valleys; coast of Alaska south of latitude 55 north, southward along the 

 islands and coast of British Columbia, through Washington and Oregon west of the 

 Cascade Mountains, and southward along the coast ranges and the western slopes of 

 the Sierra Nevada to the San Bernardino Mountains, and to Hot Spring Valley, 

 San Diego County, California; rarely ascending to more than 2000 above the level 

 of the sea; most abundant and of its largest size in the humid climate and rich 

 soil of the bottom-lands of southwestern Oregon, forming extensive forests; in Cali- 

 fornia usually much smaller, especially on the coast ranges. 



Occasionally cultivated in the eastern states, and hardy as far north as eastern 

 Pennsylvania. 



