Acer 673 



Cultivation 



This is the commonest in cultivation of all the American maples, except 

 A. Negundo, and was the first to be introduced, having been cultivated by 

 Tradescant as long ago as 1656. Miller says that a tree produced seed in his time 

 from which plants were raised in the Bishop's garden at Fulham ; and, according 

 to Loudon, one of these in 1 793 was 40 feet by 4 feet 3 inches, but was dead before 

 1809. It was often confused with the silver maple, and even Loudon says that 

 they are only varieties of one species, though he treats them under separate names. 

 No one, however, who has seen them in their native country could doubt their 

 distinction, which was first established by Linnaeus. 



The red maple is perfectly hardy everywhere in Great Britain, but requires 

 considerable summer heat and a good soil to bring it to any size. On dry sandy 

 soils it is a stunted tree of no beauty. Its seed, like that of the silver maple, 

 ripens early and must be sown at once, but Loudon says that in his time it was 

 propagated by layers, which, coupled with insufficiency of moisture in the soil, may 

 account for the rarity of fine specimens. 



I have raised seedlings this year from seeds sent me from Arley by Mr. R. 

 Woodward in July, when he found them germinating freely below the parent tree; 

 and Mr. Knowles, gardener to H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, tells me that he 

 has found self-sown seedlings at Bagshot Park. 



Remarkable Trees 



At no place in England, so far as we know, are there so many fine red maples 

 as at Bagshot Park, the seat of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught. When I visited 

 this place on May 22, 1907, the fruit was so abundant on trees in an open wood 

 that it gave therri quite a red appearance. The largest of these that I measured 

 was 82 feet by 9J feet, with a bole about 20 feet long (Plate 177). There is 

 another on the bank of the lake at Claremont which measures about 75 feet 

 by 9^ feet. 



At Whitton, near Hounslow, there is a large tree, probably 150 years old, near 

 the group of Taxodium distichum, in ground which has moisture beneath, and in 

 1904 it measured 80 feet by 8 feet 5 inches, but as this tree is not mentioned by 

 Loudon, it may not be so old as we think, though decay has already commenced 

 (Plate 192). At Walcot there is a tree which in March 1904 was in flower, and 

 measured 68 feet by 6^ feet. At Arley Castle there is a fine tree with mistletoe 

 growing on it, which produced seed freely in 1907, and measures about 60 feet by 

 ^\ feet. 



In a wood south of Virginia Water in Windsor Park, Henry measured, in 

 1906, a tree 80 feet .by 6 feet 2 inches; and at South Lodge, Enfield Chase, 

 there is a tree which was 50 feet by 6 feet 7 inches in 1904. 



A variety under the name of globosum, which I saw growing in an ornamental 



