CHAP. XXII. ACERA CEE, ACER. 415 
Leaves blotched with white. This variety is much more common 
than the other. Tschoudi says of it, that it is one of the finest 
trees that can be seen; and that, in the beginning of summer, it 
is delightful to stand under it, and look through the leaves to the 
sun. At a short distance, he adds, the leaves are as beautiful as 
flowers. In Britain, however, like the leaves of most other variegated 
deciduous trees, they soon become ragged, and lose, in autumn, by 
dying off of a dirty colour and diseased appearance, what they have 
gained by their whiteness and transparency in spring. Of all the 
variegated varieties of A‘cer, however, it must be acknowledged that 
this variety is to be considered the most ornamental. 
¥ A. P.4 purpurea Hort. The purple-leaved Sycamore.—The leaves are of 
a fine purple underneath. This variety was originated in Saunders’s 
Nursery, Jersey, about 1828, and is now to be met with in all the 
principal nurseries. The tree has a very fine appearance when the 
leaves are slightly ruffled by the wind, alternately appearing clothed 
in purple and in pale green. In spring, when the leaves first ex- 
pand, the purple bloom is not obvious; but when they become ma- 
tured it is very distinct. 
¥ A. P. 5 subobtisa Dec. Prod., i. p. 594. The half-obtuse-leaved Syca- 
more, — Lobes of leaves blunter; fruit and wings larger. A. opuli- 
folium Thuil, Fl. Par., 538. A, vitifolium Opiz. 
+ A. P. 6 lacinidta Loud. Hort. Brit., p. 412. The cut-leaved Sycamore. 
—Lobes of leaves jagged. (Schm. Arb., i. 5.; Don's Mill., i. p. 648.) 
Other Varieties. nthe garden of the London Horticultural Society there 
is a variety called Hodghins’s Seedling, with yellow blotched leaves; and 
another, called Leslie’s Seedling. In Hayne’s Dendrologische Flora there. 
are, also, the following varieties: A. P. stendptera, A. P. macroptera, and 
A. P. micréptera, which differ in the proportions of the wings of the keys, 
and do not appear worth farther notice. 
Description. A large handsome tree, of quick growth, with a smooth ash- 
coloured bark, and round spreading branches. Leaves on long footstalks, 
4in. or 5 in. broad, palmate, with 5 acute, variously serrated lobes; the middle 
one largest, pale or glaucous beneath. Flowers green, the size of a currant 
blossom, disposed into axillary, pendulous, compound clusters. Capsules 2 
or 3, with broad spreading wings. (Smith’s Eng. Flora, ii. p. 230., with adapt- 
ation.) The fruits of this species are botanically interesting, from the readiness 
with which the funiculus may be traced in its passage through the base of the 
samara to its union with the seed; and from the neat and copious lining of 
soft and glossy down, with which the interior of the cell of the samara is coated, 
as if for a commodious lodging for the seed, till wind shall have acted on the 
wing of the samara, and disseminated it, and the moisture of the earth whereon 
it falls shall have excited the seed it contains to germinate. In this species, 
the cotyledons are circinately folded, and incumbent on the radicle. The 
cotyledons, but, perhaps, after germination, and the primordial leaves (those 
first produced on germination), are, when chewed, bitter. Professor Henslow 
has found, by “a careful search 
among the numerous young plants 
of this tree which every where 
spring up in its neighbourhood, 
many in which the cotyledons were 
either three or four. In some in- 
stances, where there were only two, 
as usual, one of them was more 
or less cloven down the middle 
Jig. 110. a); and these served to 
illustrate, ina marked manner, the way in which others had become possessed 
of more than their ordinary number. For, in these cases, either two of the 
cotyledons were not, at first, so large as the third, when there were three 
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