Acer 653 



and most easterly point in Russia. Its easterly limit extends from here through 

 Voronej and Kharkof to the Crimea, where it grows in the mountains. It is also 

 met with in the region of the steppes, growing on the banks of streams. The 

 southern limit in Europe is not exactly known ; but the tree occurs in the 

 mountains of Turkey, Dalmatia, Italy, and Sicily, and in the Pyrenees and the 

 mountainous parts of the northern provinces of Spain and Portugal. 



Inside these limits, its distribution over the continent of Europe is not at all 

 uniform, and is very scattered, as it is totally absent from many districts where the 

 climate or the conditions of the soil are unfavourable. It is rather a tree of the 

 plains, valleys, and hills, than of the mountains ; and is especially met with in the 

 broad-leaved forests, often growing as underwood in coppice with standards, and on 

 the edges of woods, on the banks of streams, and in hedges. It ascends in Southern 

 Bavaria to 2500 feet elevation. In France, it is scattered through coppice 

 woods on the plains and low hills ; but is rather rare in the Mediterranean region, 

 and is not a native of Corsica. It has been found in Algeria in one or two 

 restricted localities. It grows throughout the Caucasus ' at elevations ranging 

 from sea-level to 6000 feet. 



Acer catnpestre is abundant as a wild tree in Southern England, and is recorded 

 by Watson ^ from most of the counties of England and Wales, as far north as 

 Durham. It is clearly native, according to Baker,' in the denes of the magnesian 

 limestone of Durham, but is doubtfully so north of the Tyne, though it may be 

 indigenous in the woods of the steep banks of the Wansbeck about Morpeth and 

 Mitford, where there are trees about 30 or 40 feet high ; but in the Cheviot Hills it 

 seems to have been introduced. Most of the English county records * mention it as 

 common in woods, hedges, and on the banks of streams ; and in North Yorkshire ^ it 

 ascends to 300 feet and in West Yorkshire " to 600 feet. 



It is probably not indigenous in Scotland, though Woodforde '' records it in 

 woods at Queensferry, near Edinburgh, and Gardiner ^ says it grows in a wood at 

 Mains of Hallerton in Forfarshire. In Ireland,^ though it grows in hedges and 

 woods in many places, it is in all cases planted or derived from plantations. 



It has been found in the fossil state ^'' in neolithic deposits at Crossness in 

 Essex, and in preglacial deposits at Pakefield in Suffolk. (A. H.) 



Cultivation 



The maple is common in hedgerows in many parts of England, but can hardly 

 be considered as a forest tree, though it forms a considerable part of the under- 

 wood in some woods in the Cotswold Hills, and attains considerable size even on 



' Radde, Pflanzenverb. Kaukasuslaiid. 175 (1899). ^ Topographical Botany, 104(1873). 



^ Baker and Tate, New Flora of Northumberland and Dicrham, 141 (1868). 



* Jones and Kingston, Flora Devoniemis, 69 (1829); Ley, Flora of Herefordshire, 63 (1889); Bromfield, Flora 



Vectensis, 95 (1856); Hind, Flora of Suffolk, 93 (1889); Druce, Flora of Oxfordshire, 65 (1886); Leighton, Flora of 

 Shropshire, 163 (1 84 1). 



6 Baker, North Yorkshire, 276 (1906). Lees, Flora of W. Yorkshire, 187 (1888). 



' Catalogue, 23 (1824). ' Flora of Forfcrshire, 39 (1848). 



Cybele Hibernica, 482 (1898). Reid, Origin British Flora, 113 (1 899). 



