ACERACE^E 



633 



oping 8-10 from the ground stout upright branches forming while the tree is 

 young a narrow egg-shaped head, ultimately spreading into a broad round- topped 

 dome often 70-80 across, and slender branchlets green at first, becoming reddish 

 brown by the end of their first season, lustrous, marked by numerous large pale 

 oblong lentieels, and in their second winter pale brown tinged with red. Winter- 

 buds acute, %' long, with purple slightly puberulous outer scales, and inner scales 

 becoming !' long, narrowly obovate, short-pointed at the apex, thin, pubescent, and 

 bright canary yellow. Bark of young stems and of large branches pale, smooth or 

 slightly fissured, becoming on large trunks ' f ' thick and broken into deep longitu- 

 dinal furrows, the light gray-brown surface separating into small gray-brown scales. 

 Wood heavy, hard, strong, close-grained, tough, light brown tinged with red, with 

 thin sap wood of 30^0 layers of annual growth; largely used for the interior finish 

 of buildings, especially for floors, in the manufacture of furniture and in turnery, in 

 shipbuilding, shoe-lasts and pegs, and largely as fuel. Accidental forms with the 

 grain curled and contorted, known as curly maple and bird's eye maple, are common 

 and are highly prized in cabinet-making. The ashes of the wood are rich in alkali 

 and yield large quantities of potash. Maple sugar is principally made from the sap 

 of this tree. Southward passing into 



Acer Saccharum, var. Rugelii, Rehd. 



A large tree, with subcoriaceous leaves usually rather broader than long, pale or 

 glaucous and pubescent or rarely glabrous below, cordate, with a broad open sinus, 

 or truncate at the base, and usually 3-lobed, with open round sinuses and acuminate 



generally entire lobes. This is the common and frequently the only form of the 

 Sugar Maple in the region from North Carolina and Georgia to Missouri, and it 

 occasionally occurs northward to Michigan and Prince Edward's Island, leaves of 

 this form sometimes appearing on the upper branches of trees bearing on their lower 

 branches typical leaves of the northern Sugar Maple. 



Very frequently planted as a shade and ornamental tree in the northern states. 

 In the streets and gardens of the towns and cities of northern Alabama and northern 

 Georgia the variety Rugelii is largely used. 



