206 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



call Nature's rules are really general principles char- 

 acterized by a remarkable quality of elasticity. I 

 have not yet found a botanist, to whom I had occa- 

 sion to defer some difficult specimen, who did not 

 preface his opinion with some reference to this elas- 

 ticity. Now, in distinguishing the red from the 

 mountain maple I should never rely wholly on 



a particular leaf. The flowers of 



the red maple much precede 



the leaves in early spring; 



the twigs are red, not 



brown, as in the 



mountain maple ; 



the wings of the 



seeds only slightly 



Attenuated Leaf of Red Maple. diverge, and the 



leaf is whitish underneath, free from the down which 

 characterizes the other maple (except, perhaps, at the 

 junction of the veins), and it turns bright, deep red 

 or orange in autumn. 



The drawing of the long, narrow leaf was taken 

 from a young tree which grows in the White Moun- 

 tains ; that of the typical leaf was taken from an 

 older tree in the Arnold Arboretum ; and that of 

 the three-lobed leaf represents a specimen belong- 

 ing to a large tree at Plymouth, N. H. 



The red maple is common throughout the North, 



