MOUNTAIN MAPLE 
Calyx.—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 A 
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. Keyes pouna Male 
These wings are thick on the lower mar- is 
gin, but very thin and papery on the upper. The keys do 
not fly as they would were they better balanced, but they 
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