686 



TREES OF NORTH AMERICA 



becoming glabrous during the summer, bright red during their first winter, gray or pale 

 brown the following season, and blotched or streaked with green toward the base; more 

 often a tall or low shrub. Winter-buds acute; the terminal |-' long, with bright red outer 

 scales more or less coated with hoary tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at 

 maturity 1' or more in length and then lanceolate, pale and papery; axillary buds much 

 smaller and glabrous or puberulous. Bark of the trunk very thin, reddish brown, smooth 

 or slightly furrowed. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with 

 thick lighter colored sapwood. 



Distribution. Moist rocky hillsides usually in the shade of other trees, and really 

 arborescent only on the western slopes of the high mountains of Tennessee and North 

 Carolina; Newfoundland and Labrador to Hudson Bay, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, 

 and southward through the northern states, and westward to Minnesota and northeastern 

 Iowa, and along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia. 



Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the northern states. 



4. Acer pennsylvanicum L. Striped Maple. Moose Wood. 



Leaves rounded or cordate at base, palmately 3-nerved, 3-lobed at apex, with short lobes 

 contracted into a tapering serrate point, and finely and sharply doubly serrate, when they 

 unfold thin, pale rose color and coated with ferrugineous pubescence, especially on the 



Fig. 618 



lower surface and on the petioles, and at maturity glabrous with the exception of tufts of 

 ferrugineous hairs in the axils of the principal nerves on the two surfaces, thin, pale green 

 above, rather paler below, o'-6' long and 4'-5' wide; turning in the autumn clear light 

 yellow; petioles stout, grooved, l^'-2' in length, with an enlarged base nearly encircling 

 the branch. Flowers bright canary-yellow, opening toward the end of May or early in 

 June when the leaves are nearly fully grow r n, on slender pedicels ?'~ l n g> m slender 

 drooping long-stemmed racemes 4 '-6' in length, the staminate and pistillate usually in 

 different racemes on the same plant; sepals linear-lanceolate to obovate, \' long and a little 

 shorter and narrower than the obovate petals; stamens 7-8, shorter than the petals in the 

 staminate flower, rudimentary in the pistillate flower; ovary purplish brown, glabrous, in 

 the staminate flower reduced to a minute point; styles united nearly to the top, with 

 spreading recurved stigmas. Fruit in long drooping racemes, glabrous, with thin spreading 

 w r ings f ' long, and marked on one side of each nutlet by a small cavity; seeds \ f long, dark 

 red-brown, and slightly rugose. 



A tree, 30-40 high, with a short trunk 8'-10' in diameter, small upright branches, and 

 slender smooth branchlets pale greenish yellow at first, bright reddish brown during their 



