Acer 675 



Varieties 



The most remarkable are : var. laciniatum, leaves deeply divided into narrow 

 lobes ; and var. tripariitum, in which the division of the leaves is carried to the 

 midrib. Various intermediate forms, as regards the shape of the leaf, have also 

 received names, which are not worth recognition. Variegated forms are also known 

 in cultivation. M, H.) 



Distribution 



The silver maple extends from New Brunswick through Southern Ontario to 

 Eastern Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory on the west, and southward 

 to Florida; but is rare near the Atlantic coast and on the higher Alleghany 

 Mountains. Sargent gives an excellent article ^ on this species, with an illustration 

 of a tree growing in the open near Boston, and says that it is an inhabitant of low 

 sandy river banks, and grows to its greatest size on the tributaries of the lower 

 Ohio, where it sometimes attains 120 feet in height and 9 to 12 feet in girth. 

 Ridgway measured one in the lower Wabash Valley, which was 118 feet by 14 feet. 

 Michaux says that near Pittsburg, trees of 12 to 15 feet in girth were common on 

 the bank of the river, sometimes alone and sometimes mixed with the willow. 

 Emerson states that in Massachusetts he measured a tree^ 12^ feet in girth in a 

 meadow near Northampton, and that another near Lancaster was 16 feet 8 inches 

 round at 6 feet from the ground. 



In Canada, where I saw it on the sandy banks of the Gatineau River, near 

 Ottawa, close to its northern limit, it was no larger than in England, but the colour 

 of the leaves was more beautiful than it ever becomes in cultivated trees with us, as 

 is usual in the case of deciduous trees in America. In the open situations which it 

 usually frequents, it is a wide-spreading tree ; and Michaux says that it forms a more 

 spacious head than any other tree that he knew. 



The fruit, if not destroyed by spring frost, which often happens, ripens in a few 

 weeks after the time of flowering ; and if it falls on moist open ground, germinates 

 at once, and sometimes produces plants nearly a foot high before winter. Sargent 

 suggests that this rapid ripening, which is peculiar to the red and silver maples, 

 is a provision of nature for their preservation in situations where the seed, if it 

 ripened in autumn, like other maples, would be water-logged by floods and lose its 

 vitality. 



Sargent considers it a valuable tree for ornamental planting, only in deep 

 moist meadow land, or by the banks of streams, where it can spread its long and 

 graceful branches and show its brilliant foliage. This is quite borne out by the 

 specimens which I have seen in England. It is one of the favourite trees for 

 planting in many of the northern cities of the United States. 



' Garden and Forest, 'w. 133(1891). 



2 Fifty-two years later, in 1890, we learn from a note in Garden and Forest, iii. 36, that this tree was 17 feet 4 inches 

 in girth at the same height, having made an annual increase in girth of more than an inch. Though the trunk was partly 

 hollow and some of the branches were gone, the tree was still growing vigorously and might live for many years more. 

 Ill 2 G 



