DECIDUOUS TREES. 345 



white and the green surfaces of the leaves with a sparkling pleasant 

 effect. It is a tree for large grounds and wide streets, and must 

 have ample room. Forty feet is the least distance apart that silver 

 maples should be planted in streets, and no more than they will 

 completely fill in twenty years. The head of the silver maple does 

 not break into good masses of light and shade until it is old, and 

 in the mean time the projection of its numerous spreading branches 

 scatter the light on a great number of small points, and develop 

 no broad, deep, or well-defined shadows. 



The silver maple is not quite so early in leaf as the sugar 

 maple ; the leaves are not of so beautiful a green, nor so generous 

 in quantity, nor so warm in their manner of reflecting the sunlight, 

 nor so brilliant in autumn. As a lawn tree for the class of grounds 

 treated of in this work, it cannot be considered so desirable as 

 many others ; the great size it quickly attains requiring a space for 

 its perfect development that may be more interestingly filled with 

 trees of smaller size. Of course this objection will not apply so 

 forcibly to places where one or more acres is devoted to lawn, nor 

 to places where the proprietor wants but few trees, and those 

 quickly, nor to those who will make a specialty of the maple 

 family alone. 



Red-flowering or Scarlet Maple (Red- bud Maple). 

 Acer rubrum. — The three names all characterize the spring and 

 autumn peculiarities of the tree. It is covered with small red buds, 

 which open before the expanf-ion of the leaves in spring ; and the 

 brilliancy of its scarlet leave , in autumn makes it then one of the 

 most conspicuous of trees, and constitutes a distinguishing beauty, 

 which would, alone, make it a desirable tree. It flourishes best in 

 a soil much richer than that which suits the sugar maple, and 

 attains its greatest size in ground where its roots can reach the 

 moisture of a stream. There are specimens on streams near Phila- 

 delphia seventy to eighty feet high, with a proportional amplitude of 

 lateral growth, touching the meadow on one side and the stream 

 upon which they grow upon the other with the graceful droop of 

 their lower branches. On rich uplands it has a compacter growth 

 and darker foliage, and becomes a round-headed tree of about forty 



