84 
ACER SACCHARINUM. 
greatly resemble the Norway maple. In autumn, after the appearance of the 
first frost, their colour changes from green to all shades of red, from the deepest 
crimson to light orange. The flowers, which appear in April and May, are 
small, of a pale greenish-yellow, and are suspended by slender, drooping pedun- 
cles. The seed is contained in two capsules, united at the base, and terminating 
in membraneous wings about an inch in length. It usually ripens in Pennsyl- 
vania and New York by the first of October, though the fruit attains its full size 
a month or six weeks earlier. Externally, the keys appear equally perfect; but 
one of them, Michaux informs us, is always empty. The fruit matures only 
once in two or three years. 
Variety. The Acer saccharinum has been 
confounded by some botanists with another tree 
so nearly allied to it, that it can only be re- 
garded as a variety. From the dark hue of 
its leaves, it was very appropriately designated 
by Mr. Loudon, under the name of A. s. ni- 
grum, {Acer nigrum, Michaux,) or Black Su- 
gar Maple. According to Michaux, the leaves 
of this variety are pale-green beneath, the 
veins of the lower surface and petioles minutely 
villous-pubescent, and the wings of the fruit a 
little more diverging than those of the species, 
as indicated in the adjoining figure. "The 
leaves," he says, "are five or six inches long, 
and exhibit, in every respect, nearly the same 
conformation as those of the true sugar maple." 
: 'They differ from it," continues he, "chiefly 
in being of a darker green, and of a thicker 
texture ; and in being somewhat more bluntly 
lobed. The tree is indiscriminately mixed with the common sugar maple, 
through extensive regions of country in New Hampshire, Vermont, and Connec- 
ticut ; but is readily distinguished from it, by the smaller size it attains, and the 
darker colour of the leaves." When the tree stands alone, it naturally assumes 
a regular and agreeable form. In Canada and New England, it rarely exceeds 
fifty feet in height, with a diameter of fifteen or twenty inches ; but in western 
New York, and in the immense valleys through which flow the great rivers of 
the west, it is common, and attains the full magnitude of the species. 
Geography and History. According to the elder Michaux, this tree is first 
seen a little north of Lake St. John, in Canada, near the forty-eighth degree of 
north latitude, which, in the rigour of its winter, corresponds with the parallel 
of about the sixty-eighth degree in Europe. It is nowhere more abundant than 
between the parallels of forty-three and forty-six degrees, comprising all, or a 
great part of Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the states of Maine, New 
Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, the true region assigned by nature for the 
growth of this tree. It is also found, but more sparingly, in almost every state 
in the union, particularly on the flanks of the entire range of the Alleghanies to 
their termination in Georgia. 
This species was introduced into England, in 1734, by Collinson, and since 
that time, it has been cultivated in the principal gardens throughout Europe. 
Count Wingersky is said to have planted a great number of trees on his estate in 
Moravia, and to have drawn off the sap from them at the age of twenty-five 
years, in order to make sugar. He succeeded in procuring a very good article ; 
but in consequence of depriving the trees of their sap every year, they became 
sickly, and soon afterwards died. 
