Acer spicatum, 
THE SPIKE-FLOWERED MAPLE. 
Synonymes. 
( LiNNiEUS, Species Plantarum. 
I De Candolle, Prodromus. 
Acer spicatum. 1 Don, Miller's Dictionary 
Loudon, Arboretum Bntannicum. 
[ Torrey and Gray, Flora of North America. 
Michaux, North American Sylva. 
France. 
Germany. 
Italy. 
Britain and Anglo- America. 
Acer montanum, 
Erable de montagne, 
Berg Ahorn, 
Acero di montagna, 
Mountain Maple, Low Maple, 
eneravin-s Michaux, North American Sylva, pi. 47; Audubon, Birds of America, pi. cxxxiv. ; Loudon, Arboretum Bri- 
tannicum, l, B fi&ure 115, pi. 435, et v. p. 26; and the figures below. 
Specific Characters. Leaves cordate, 3- or slightly 5-lobed, acuminated, pubescent beneath, unequally and 
coarsely serrated. Racemes compound, erect. Petals linear. Fruit smooth, with the wings rather 
diverging. Don, Millers Diet. 
Description. 
||HE Mountain Maple 
$ H H ^ is a low, deciduous 
I)? LI f$ tree or shrub, seldom 
Ifefell exceeding a height 
of ten or twelve feet in its native hab- 
itat, and it often flowers at an eleva- 
tion of less than six feet. It most fre- 
quently grows in the form of a shrub, 
with a single stem, and a straight stock. 
The leaves are large, opposite, and 
divided into three acute and indented 
lobes. They are slightly hairy at their 
unfolding, and when fully grown, they 
are uneven and of a dark green on the upper surface. The flowers, which 
appear in May and June, are small, of a greenish colour, and consist of semi- 
erect spikes from two to four inches in length. The seeds, which are smaller 
than any of the other American maples, are fixed upon slender, pendulous foot- 
stalks. They are reddish at maturity, have each a small cavity on one side, 
and are surmounted by a membraneous wing. They are usually ripe in the 
early part of October. 
Geography and History. The Acer spicatum is most abundant in Canada, 
and along the range of the Alleghany Mountains, as far south as the forty-first 
degree of latitude. It was introduced into England in 1750, by Archibald, Duke 
of Argyle, and has since been cultivated in many of the gardens on the continent. 
According to Loudon, the largest tree of this species in England, is at Croome, 
in Worcestershire, which, in 1835, had been planted thirty years, and was forty 
feet high, fifteen inches in diameter near the ground, with an ambitus, or extent of 
branches, of twenty feet. He mentions another at Edinburgh, in the Caledonian 
Horticultural Society's garden, which, nine years after planting, was thirty feel 
high. Also, another at Florence Court, the residence of the Earl of Enniskillen, 
in Ireland, which at thirty-eight years' growth was fifty feet high. 
