MAPLE FAMILY 



Fruit. — Two samaras united forming a maple key. Borne on 

 drooping stems three to four inches long ; scarlet, dark red, some- 

 times brown ; wings thin, convergent at first, divergent when full 

 grown, one-half to an inch long, one-fourth to one-half an inch broad. 

 May, June. Seed dark red, germinates immediately after falling to 

 the ground. Cotyledons thin. 



The scarlet maple-keys betray, 

 What potent blood hath modest May. 



—Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



The maple crimsons to a coral reef. 



— James Russell Lowell. 



A small Red Maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some retired 

 valley, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully discharged all the 

 duties of a maple there, all winter and summer neglected none of its economies, 

 but added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady 

 growth for so many months, and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring. It 

 has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a shelter to the wandering bird, 

 has long since ripened its seeds and committed them to the winds. It deserves 

 well of mapledom. Its leaves have been asking it from time to time in a whis- 

 per, " When shall we redden ? " and now in this month of September, this month 

 of travelling, when men are hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the 

 lakes, this modest maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its reputa- 

 tion—runs up its scarlet-flag on that hillside, which shows that it has finished its 

 summer's work before all other trees, and withdrawn from the contest. At the 

 eleventh hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have detected here 

 when it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its maturity, by its very 

 blushes, revealed at last to the careless and distant traveller, and leads his 

 thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it inhabits ;,it 

 flashes out conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of a maple — Acer rubrum. 

 We may now read its title, or rubric, clear. Its virtues not its sins are as scarlet. 



— Henry D. Thoreau. 



Never was a tree more appropriately named than the Red 

 Maple. Its first blossom flushes red in the April sunlight, its 

 keys ripen scarlet in early May, all summer long its leaves 

 swing on crimson or scarlet stems, its young twigs flame in 

 the same colors and later, amid all the brilliancy of the au- 

 tumnal forest, it stands pre-eminent and unapproachable. 



The Red Maple shows a decided tendency to vary in the 

 shape of its leaves. For this reason it has been divided into 

 varieties, but these have been given up because the charac- 

 ters do not remain constant. Of two red maples standing 



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