MOUNTAIN MAPLE 



Cafy.r. — Five-lobed, lobes obovate, downy, much shorter than 

 the petals ; disk annular. 



Corolla. — Petals five, linear-spatulate, greenish yellow, imbricate 

 in bud. 



Stamens. — Seven to eight, inserted on the disk, filaments thread- 

 like, exserted in the sterile and abortive in the fertile flowers ; an- 

 thers oblong, attached at base, introrse, two-celled ; cells opening 

 longitudinally. 



Pistil. — Ovary superior, tomentose, two-lobed, two-celled, com- 

 pressed contrary to the dissepiment, wing margined ; style colum- 

 nar ; stigma two-lobed. Ovules two in each cell, one of which 

 aborts. In sterile flowers the pistil becomes a tuft of white hairs. 



Fruit. — Two samaras united, forming a maple key ; bright red 

 in July, brown in autumn ; smooth, borne in a pendulous raceme. 

 Wings more or less divergent. Seeds dark brown. September. 

 Cotyledons thick and fleshy. 



The Mountain Maple is another example of a tree that has 

 accepted its home in the shade of other 

 trees. It grows on moist rocky hillsides 

 and ranges across the continent westward 

 to the Rocky Mountains, northward to the 

 valley of the St. Lawrence River, and 

 southward to Georgia. At the north it 

 is a shrub, often seen growing by the side 

 of a mountain road. It is our one maple 

 that bears an upright raceme of flowers, 

 but when the flowers have given place to 

 fruit the raceme droops. 



The fruits of all the maples are very 

 similar. An acorn is no more the char- 

 acteristic fruit of the oaks than the maple 

 key is of the maples. This is a double 

 samara, composed of two carpels, separ- 

 able from a small persistent axis ; these 

 carpels are compressed laterally, and 

 each is produced into a reticulated wing. 

 These wings are thick on the lower mar- 

 gin, but very thin and papery on the upper. The keys do 

 not fly as they would were they better balanced, but they 



65 



Keys of Mountain Maple, 

 'iAccr spicatum. 



