MAPLE FAMILY 
Fruit.—Two samaras united forming a maple key. Borne on 
drooping stems three to four inches long; scarlet, dark red, some- 
times brown; wings thin, convergent at first, divergent when full 
grown, one-half to an inch long, one-fourth to one-half an inch broad. 
May, June. Seed dark red, germinates immediately after falling to 
the ground. Cotyledons thin. 
The scarlet maple-keys betray, 
What potent blood hath modest May. 
—RaLPH WALDO EMERSON, 
The maple crimsons to a coral reef. 
—James RussELL LoweELt. 
Asmall Red Maple has grown, perchance, far away at the head of some retired 
valley, a mile from any road, unobserved. It has faithfully discharged all the 
duties of a maple there, all winter and summer neglected none of its economies, 
but added to its stature in the virtue which belongs to a maple, by a steady 
growth for so many months, and is nearer heaven than it was in the spring. It 
has faithfully husbanded its sap, and afforded a shelter to the wandering bird, 
has long since ripened its seeds and committed them to the winds. It deserves 
well of mapledom. Its leaves have been asking it from time to time in a whis- 
per, ‘‘ When shall we redden?”’ and now in this month of September, this month 
of travelling, when men are hastening to the seaside, or the mountains, or the 
lakes, this modest maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its reputa- 
tion—runs up its scarlet-flag on that hillside, which shows that it has finished its 
summer's work before all other trees, and withdrawn from the contest. At the 
eleventh hour of the year, the tree which no scrutiny could have detected here 
when it was most industrious is thus, by the tint of its maturity, by its very 
blushes, revealed at last to the careless and distant traveller, and leads his 
thoughts away from the dusty road into those brave solitudes which it inhabits ; it 
flashes out conspicuous with all the virtue and beauty of a maple—-tcer rubrum. 
We may now read its title, or rubric, clear. Its virtues not its sins are as scarlet. 
—Henry D, THoreau, 
Never was a tree more appropriately named than the Red 
Maple. Its first blossom flushes red in the April sunlight, its 
keys ripen scarlet in early May, all summer long its leaves 
swing on crimson or scarlet stems, its young twigs flame in 
the same colors and later, amid all the brilliancy of the au- 
tumnal forest, it stands pre-eminent and unapproachable. 
The Red Maple shows a decided tendency to vary in the 
shape of its leaves. lor this reason it has been divided into 
varieties, but these have been given up because the charac- 
ters do not remain constant. Of two red maples standing 
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