98 SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. SAPINDACEE. 
turn in autumn to brilliant shades of deep red, scarlet, and orange, or of clear yellow.' The flowers are 
produced in many-flowered nearly sessile umbel-like corymbs from terminal leafy buds and from lateral 
leafless buds; the sterile and fertile flowers are in separate clusters on the same or on different trees, the 
fertile flowers terminal and the sterile usually lateral. They appear with the leaves, and are greenish 
yellow and borne on slender thread-like hairy pedicels two and a half to three inches in length. The 
calyx is broadly campanulate, five-lobed by the partial union of the obtuse sepals, and hairy on the outer 
surface. There are seven or eight stamens with slender glabrous filaments which, in the sterile flower, 
are twice as long as the calyx, and in the fertile flower much shorter. The ovary, which in the sterile 
flower is reduced to a minute point, is obtusely lobed, pale green, and covered with long scattered hairs. 
The styles are united at the base only, and have two long exserted stigmatic lobes. The fruit, which 
ripens in the autumn, is glabrous; the wings vary from half an inch to rather more than an inch in 
length, and are broad, thin, and usually divergent. The seed is a quarter of an inch long, with a 
smooth bright red-brown coat and foliaceous thick cotyledons.’ 
Acer barbatum is one of the most widely and generally distributed trees of eastern North America. 
The northern limit of its range on the Atlantic coast is southern Newfoundland ; it extends southward 
through Canada and the northern states and along the Alleghany Mountains to northern Georgia and 
western Florida, and westward along the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay, by the shores 
of Lake St. John and the northern borders of the Great Lakes to the Lake of the Woods, and in the 
United States to Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, eastern Kansas, and eastern Texas. It is one of the 
common trees in all these regions, especially at the north and on the slopes of the southern mountains, 
growing on rich uplands and on intervale lands mingled with Ashes and Hickories, the White Oak, the 
Wild Cherry, the Black Birch, the Yellow Birch, and the Hemlock ; or often at the north forming the 
principal part of extensive forests.’ 
The wood of Acer barbatum is heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, and tough, with a fine satiny 
surface susceptible of receiving a good polish; it is light brown tinged with red, with thin sapwood 
composed of thirty or forty layers of annual growth, and contains numerous thin medullary rays. The 
specific gravity of the absolutely dry wood is 0.6912, a cubic foot weighing 43.08 pounds. The wood 
of the Sugar Maple is more valuable and more generally used than that of any other American Maple. 
It possesses a high fuel value, burning with a clear steady flame ; it is largely used for the interior finish 
of buildings, especially for floors, in the manufacture of furniture and in turnery, in shipbuilding for 
keels, keelsons, shoes, etc., for the handles of tools, and for saddle-trees; and in the United States shoe- 
lasts and pegs are made almost exclusively from this wood. Accidental forms in which the grain is 
beautifully curled and contorted, known as “curled maple” and “bird’s eye maple,’ are common and 
highly prized in cabinet-making. The ashes of the wood are rich in alkah and yield large quantities of 
potash ; and maple-sugar is principally made from the sap of this species.* 
1 Much of the splendor of the northern forest in early autumn 8 Tt is not unusual to find the undergrowth in some of the forest 
is due to the abundance of the Sugar Maple, which is then unsur- regions near the northern border of the United States composed 
passed in brilliancy of color by any upland tree. Individuals vary almost entirely of young Sugar Maples ; and the multiplication of 
in the time and in the manner of assuming their autumn colors, but _ this tree is insured and its value in forest composition increased by 
such peculiarities appear fixed and are certainly renewed year after the remarkable ability it possesses while young to grow under the 
year. All the leaves on a single branch sometimes turn bright dense shade of other trees. 
scarlet early in October, while the rest of the foliage remains green. 4 Sugar-making begins with the upward flow of the crude sap, 
On some trees a part of the leaves turn scarlet and a part orange or between the end of February and the beginning of April, as the 
or yellow ; on others all the leaves assume shades of bright clear season is early or late, and continues during three or four weeks. 
yellow, and on others a few leaves become red or yellow on differ- Trees twenty or thirty years old are considered the most produc- 
ent parts long before the remainder lose their dark green summer 
tive and yield the purest sugar, although sap can be drawn from 
color. 
the tree year after year without seriously injuring it. Trees exist 
2 The fruit of Acer barbatum, although it usually appears to be in northern New York which are known to have yielded sugar 
fully developed, is often abortive ; and it is rare to find perfect every year for a century, and which, while much swollen about the 
seed in each of the two carpels, or a tree which produces seed every base from repeated wounds, are still vigorous and fruitful. A tree 
year. of the average size will give in an ordinary season twenty or thirty 
