MAPLE FAMILY 
Stamens.—Seven or eight in the staminate flowers, rudimentary 
in the pistillate. Hypogynous; filaments short; anthers introrse, 
two-celled ; cells opening longitudinally. 
Pis/il.—Rudimentary in staminate flowers. In pistillate flowers, 
ovary superior, purplish brown, downy, two-celled, compressed con- 
trary to the dissepiment, wing-margined ; style short ; stigmas two, 
recurved and spreading ; ovules two in each cell, one of which aborts. 
Fruit,—Two samaras united forming a maple key. Borne in long 
drooping racemes, smooth, with thin spreading wings three-fourths to 
an inch long; on one side of each nutletis a small cavity. Seeds dark 
reddish brown, September. Cotyledons thin, irregularly plicate. 
This maple is a mountain tree. It has no special economic 
value, but its beauty is its sufficient “ excuse for being.” The 
delicate and exquisite coloring of opening foliage is too often 
lost upon the heedless observer, unless 
something appears so striking that it 
cannot be ignored. But in the spring- 
time this dryad of a tree, slender, deli- 
cate, clothed in a misty rosy sheen of 
buds and opening leaves, compels every 
passer-by to admire 
its beauty. 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 
the bark and branch- 
lets are the favorite 
food of the moose. 
Emerson says that in their “winter beats” this tree is 
always found completely stripped. Evidently the moose 
62 
Keys of Striped Maple, Acer pennsylvanicum. 
