74 THE MAPLE AND THE SYCAMORE. 



the sycamore grows to be seventy or eighty feet high, and many examples 

 are known with trunks of five or six feet in diameter. The age it is 

 capable of attaining appears to be fully 200 years. While contrasting 

 it with the exotic plane, it is right to say here that, although perfectly 

 at home in this country, and often possessing all the semblance of an 

 ancient Briton, the sycamore is also an exotic, having been introduced 

 in the time of the later crusades, from some part of eastern Europe or 

 western Asia, in which regions alone it is truly indigenous. The 

 maple, on the other hand, is one of our veritable aborigines. Let it be 

 added, as regards the samaras, that the two trees are distinguishable by 

 a certain difference between these quite as readily as by the outline of 

 their leaves. The samaras of the sycamore are so placed as to make a 

 letter U, and resemble a pair of sword-blades, while in the maple they 

 spread horizontally. Those of the former hang in racemes ; those of 

 the latter in little bunches of three or four. 



Connected with the leaves of these two trees, there are one or two 

 other circumstances deserving notice. In both, they are remarkably 

 red when first developed, giving a faint idea of what Sir Emerson 

 Tennent states to be the customary condition of things in the island of 

 Ceylon. In that beautiful tropic island, he says, it is not autumn which 

 is marked, as in England, by the assumption of rich colours by the trees, 

 but spring ; that which in our northern latitudes accompanies decline 

 and decay, being there associated with the energy of youth and growth. 

 We may readily understand it from contemplating, not alone the lively 

 tints of the trees in question, but the brilliant tints of the young leaves 

 of many Indian plants cultivated in our conservatories, the Dracaenas, 

 for example, which begin life in the most vivid and luxurious crimson. 

 Another interesting fact is the peculiarly rapid expansion of the leaves, 

 at all events in the sycamore. This comes of their being folded up, 

 while in the bud, after the manner of a lady's fan when closed, and 

 similarly, therefore, to those of the "lady's mantle," that pretty little 

 occupant of our meadows and pastures, which holds dew in its^ plaits 

 and angles. A few hours will often suffice to cover a sycamore tree 

 with an apparently miraculous outburst of foliage ; buds in the early 

 morning, in the evening a green vesture in every portion. The horse- 

 chesnut, which has the leaves plaited while young, in a manner very 

 similar, is the only tree of common occurrence which so soon changes 

 winter into spring. Then there is the curious ornamenting of the leaves 

 of the maple with little red pimples, which gives them often a very 

 pretty appearance. Turn the leaf upside down, and you will discover 



