THE MAPLE. 



A'oei- ewmpes'tre' L. 



The Maple {^Acer campestre L.) is the only truly in- 

 digenous representative of the genus Acer and of the 

 Order Sapinda'cece. True, its congener the Sycamore 

 is a very common tree, famijiar to all, as is also the 

 Horse-chestnut, which is more distantly akin ; but 

 neither of these has been more than a few centuries 

 in our islands, whilst the Maple is not only common, 

 but has never been doubted to. be a truly wild tree. 

 To distinguish it from its allied species, our Maple is 

 sometimes called the Common, Field, or Small-leaved 

 Maple. 



Though it is, perhaps, chiefly with the autumn 

 glories of North American woodlands that we associate 

 the beautifully varied tints of the dying leaves of the 

 Maples, the greater number of the fifty or sixty species 

 of the group are natives of Asia, and chiefly of that 

 part of Asia which lies between Japan and the Hima- 

 layas. They are, in fact, essentially trees of the North 

 Temperate zone ; but in looking intelligently at our 

 humble hedgerow bush — for the Maple seldom stands 

 alone, or reaches the dimensions of a timber- tree— we 

 should bear in mind, not only the range in space of 

 its existing fellows, but also their interesting extinct 

 representatives in the remote past. It has been 

 suggested that all the floras of the world have had 

 a northern origin, and that plants in general tend to 



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