MAPLE FAMILY 



knows a good tiling when he finds it, for the young and ten- 

 der shoots are tilled with saccharine juice, which he fully 

 appreciates. 



It is now well known by botanists that the headquarters of 

 the maples is not in America, but in Asia. North America 

 has but nine species, China and Japan have over thirty. It 

 is estimated that fully one-third of the deciduous forests of 

 Japan is composed of different species of maples. Professor 

 Sargent records that among these maples is one barely dis- 

 tinguishable from our Acer poinsylvanicum. 



MOUNTAIN MAPLE 



Acer spicatiini. 



A bushy tree sometimes thirty feet high, more often a shrub. 

 Flourishes in the shade and forms much of the undergrowth of the 

 forests. Ranges from lower St. Lawrence River to northern Min- 

 nesota and region of the Saskatchewan River; south through the 

 northern states and along the Appalachian Mountains to Georgia, 

 Roots fibrous. 



Bark. — Reddish brown, slightly furrowed. Branchlets terete, 

 at first gray and downy, then reddish, later, gray again and at last 

 brown. 



Wood. — Pale reddish brown, sapwood paler ; light, soft, close- 

 grained. Sp. gr., 0.5330; weight of cu. ft., 33.22 lbs. 



Winter Buds. — Terminal flower bud an eighth of an inch long, 

 tomentose ; leaf buds smaller, acute, red ; scales enlarge when 

 spring growth begins ; the inner scales lengthen until they are an 

 inch or more long, become pale and papery before they fall. 



Leaves. — Opposite, simple, palniately-lobed, sometimes slightly 

 five-lobed ; conspicuously three-nerved with prominent veinlets. 

 Four to five inches long, cordate or truncate at base, serrate ; lobes 

 acute or acuminate. They come out of the bud pale green, very 

 woolly on the under surface ; when full grown are smooth above 

 and covered with whitish down beneath. In autumn they turn 

 scarlet and orange. Petioles long, slender, with enlarged base, 

 scarlet in midsummer. 



Flowers. — June, after the leaves are full grown, Polygamo-mo- 

 noecious, greenish yellow; small, borne in upright, slightly com- 

 pound, long, hairy, terminal racemes, five to six inches long ; the 

 sterile at the end of the raceme and the fertile at the base. Pedicels 

 thread-like. 



64 



