i:-T im bt m m, 
A^er rubnnn. 
THE RED-FLOWERED MAPLE 
Synonymes. 
LnmiKUs, Sreeies Plantarum. 
Pi Cahdoujr, Prodromus. 
- Michacx. North American Sylva, 
Lotjdoh, Arboretum Britannicum. 
Tokkey axd Gkay. Flora of North America. 
Frauck. 
.ST. 
Bkitatx. 
Westekh States. 
Other fakts 01 tbs Uxited States. 
Erable rouge. 
Eother Ahorn. 
- Let-now- 
Bed Map/ 5 .:'. Maple, 5 -ramp Maple. 
The specific name, ntbn.- ei from the Latin ruber, red. havin? reference to the colour of the flow 
.= tree, The other names hare chiefly the same signification as the botanical one. 
--orj'nss. Mkhaux. Xonh America i S .ubon, Birds of America, pL liv. et Lrrii. ; Loudon, Arboretum 
Britannic _ re 130 ; p. - " i . . 1 the figures below. 
Sp*riiic Characters. Leaves cordate at the base, glaucous beneath, deeply and unequally toothed, palmately 
5-lobed, with acute recesses. Flowers conslomerate, 5-petaled, pentandrous. Ovaries smooth. Don, 
M 
Description. 
" '- || HE Acer nibrum. whether 
% - H j<f in rlower or in foliage. 
J like its congeners, is a 
ST^/V^Sa beautiful tree. Although 
n< /.her attains the. size nor the height of the 
sugar maple, it much resembles that tree hi its 
general appearance : but it may be easily distin- 
guished from it by its trunk, which, when young, 
lore profusely marked with broad, pale-yellow 
lichens. In open situations, it often ramifies at 
the ground, and assumes the form of several 
small trees, growing in a clump. The bark, in 
such situations, is usually of a darker colour, and 
smoother, when young, than it is on trees grow- 
ing in shady woods. When the tree is old. how- 
ever, the epidermis of the trunk, like that of the 
hquidambar. and white oak. becomes brown, 
chapped, and deeply furrowed. The ordinary 
height of this species does not exceed fifty or 
sixty feet : but in favourable situations, as in the maple sitamps in New Jei 
and Pennsylvania, it often attains a height of seventy or eighty feet, with a trunk 
three or four feet in diameter. The blossoms of this tree are the first that an- 
nounce the return of spring. It dowers near St Marys, in Georgia, from the 
- i to the last of February, and five or six weeks later near Philadelphia and 
New York. The flowers, which are of a beautiful purple or deep-red. unfold 
more than a fortnight before the leaves. They are small, aggregate, and are 
situated at the extremity of the branches. The fruit is suspended by long, flex- 
ible peduncles, and is of the same hue of the flowers: though it varies in size 
and in the intensity of its colouring, according to the exposure and dampness of 
