ACERACE^E 695 



Distribution. Banks of streams, rocky gorges, and woods in moist soil; valley of the 

 Vadkin River, Stanley County, North Carolina; southeastern Tennessee (Polk County); 

 valley of the Savannah River (Abbeville County, South Carolina, and Richmond County, 



Fig. 626 



Georgia) to central and northwestern Georgia (near Rome, Floyd County, and Walker 

 County) and to the valley of the Chattahoochee River to Muscogee County; northern and 

 central Alabama; western Louisiana (Natchitoches and Sabine Parishes); southern Ar- 

 kansas (Baker Springs, Howard County); rare and local; most abundant in northwestern 

 and central Georgia and northern Alabama. 



Occasionally planted as a street tree in the towns of northern Georgia and 'Alabama; 

 hardy as far north as eastern Massachusetts. 



11. Acer saccharinum L. Silver Maple. Soft Maple. 



Leaves truncate or somewhat cordate at base, deeply 5-lobed by narrow sinuses, with 

 acute irregularly and remotely dentate lobes, the middle lobe often 3-lobed, 6 '-7' long and 

 nearly as broad, thin, bright pale green above, silvery white and at first slightly hairy be- 

 low, especially in the axils of the primary veins; turning pale yellow in the autumn before 

 falling; petioles slender, drooping, bright red, 4>'-5 f in length. Flowers greenish yellow, 

 opening during the first warm days of the late winter or early spring long before the ap- 

 pearance of the leaves, on short pedicels, in sessile axillary fascicles on shoots of the previ- 

 ous year, or on short spur-like branchlets developed the year before from wood of the 

 preceding season, the staminate and pistillate in separate clusters, on the same or on 

 different trees, and produced* from clustered obtuse buds covered with thick ovate pubes- 

 cent red and green scales ciliate on the margins with a thick fringe of long rufous hairs; 

 calyx slightly 5-lobed, more or less pubescent on the outer surface, long and narrow in the 

 staminate and short and broad in the pistillate flower; corolla 0; stamens 3-7, with slender 

 filaments, three times as long as the calyx of the staminate flower and about as long as the 

 calyx of the pistillate flower; ovary covered, like the young fruit, with a thick coat of pubes- 

 cence, rudimentary in the sterile flower; styles united at base only, with long exserted stig- 

 matic lobes. Fruit ripening in April and May when the leaves are nearly grown, on slender 

 drooping pedicels, H'-2' long, glabrous, 1^' to nearly 3' long, with thin almost straight 

 conspicuously falcate divergent wings sometimes f broad, prominently reticulate-veined 

 and pale chestnut-brown or rarely bright red; seeds \' long, with a pale reddish brown 

 wrinkled coat, germinating as soon as they fall to the ground, and producing plants with 

 several pairs of leaves before the end of the summer. 



