THE MAPLES 



A hole is bored in the trunk of the tree, 

 and the sap flows for about three weeks. It 

 is collected daily in buckets, and then boiled 

 into syrup. A sugar maple should not be 

 tapped before it is twenty-five or thirty years 

 old, but after that age it may be tapped an- 

 nually as long as it lives. The wood of this 

 tree is hard and smooth, and is much used for 

 furniture and the interior finishing of houses. 

 Occasionally a tree is found where the fibres 

 of the wood are contorted irregularly into 

 round points called bird's eyes. The cause of 

 this peculiar bird's-eye maple is unknown, and 

 the theory that the grain is diverted by the tap- 

 ping of woodpeckers for the sweet sap is an 

 unsatisfactory explanation, for some trees are 

 thickly covered, while others do not have a 

 single spot. 



The Latin name, Acer sacckarum sugar 

 maple came from the Arabic, Soukar. 



Red or Swamp ^ ^ ow t ree i with a rou?ided head, 

 Maple smooth gray bark, reddish twigs 



Acer rubrutn j ,, j J ji j / 



dotted with brown, and small, 

 round red buds with smooth scales. When old 

 the bark cracks and peels off in long, slender 

 /lakes. Small leaf -scars opposite each other on the 

 stem. The flowers come before the leaves, from 

 the round flower buds clustered around the stem. 



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