MAPLE FAMILY 



Stii//it-;is. — Seven or eight in the staminate flowers, rudimentary 

 in the pistillate. Hypogynous; filaments short; anthers introrse, 

 two-celled ; cells opening longitudinally. 



Pislil. — Rudimentary in staminate flowers. In pistillate flowers, 

 ovarv superior, purplish broun, downy, two-celled, compressed con- 

 trary to the dissepiment, wing-margined ; style short ; stigmas two, 

 recur\ ed and spreading ; ovules two m each cell, one ot which aborts. 



F>-uit. — T«o samaras united lorming a maple key. Borne in long 

 drooping racemes, smooth, with thin spreading uings three-fourths to 

 an inch long : on one side of each nutlet is a small ca\ity. Seeds dark 

 reddish brown. Sepleniber. Cotyledons thin, irregularly plicate. 



This maple is a niouiuain tree. It has no special economic 

 value, but its beauty is its sufficient " excuse for being." Tlie 

 delicate and exquisite coloring" of opening foliage is too often 

 lost upi.m the heedless observer, unless 

 something appears so striking that it 

 cannot be igmired. lUit in the spring- 

 time this drvad of a tree, slender, deli- 

 cate, clothed in a mist}' rosy sheen of 

 butlsand opening leaves, compels every 

 passei'-by to admire 

 its beaut}'. Later its 

 yellow flowers hang in 

 long, graceful, droop- 

 ing racemes and are 

 succeeded by large 

 showy keys with pale 

 green, divergent 

 wings. Its leaves are 

 the largest of all our 

 maples. 



The New England 

 name Moosewood re- 

 fers to the fact that 

 tile bark and branch- 

 lets are the favorite 



Keys of Striped Maple, Acer peint^vh'antcitm. , ^ i 



food of the moose. 

 Emerson savs that in their " winter beats " this tree is 

 always found completely stripped. Evidently the moose 



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