SPECIES FOR STREET-PLANTING 21 



extensive planting in the past is the rapidity of its growth; 

 but rapid growth impHes, as a rule, short life and brittle, 

 weak wood. It is so with the white maple. Its wood is not 

 strong, and its mode of branching is such that when its 

 limbs become large they cannot sustain their own weight. 

 It is a common thing after a storm to find a great many 

 broken limbs of the white maple. 



Unlike the other trees of the same group, this tree does 

 not form a compact head of fine branches, but usually 

 divides ten or twelve feet above the ground into three or 

 four secondary stems, forming a wide, spreading head with 

 drooping branches. The twigs hang down from the tree 

 something like those of the weeping willow, and it is this 

 habit that makes it very difficult to prune the tree and keep 

 the branches a certain height above the ground. The tree 

 suggests the elm in outline, except that its limbs do not pos- 

 sess the graceful arching of the elm, but shoot obliquely up- 

 ward in almost straight lines. Its rapidity of growth makes 

 it sometimes too large for ordinary city streets, so that old 

 trees are often cut back to a few main stubs above the 

 trunk. A new top is soon formed by suckers that rise from 

 the shortened limbs, but the tree's symmetry is lost forever. 



The white maple is one of the first trees to blossom in the 

 early spring. Its tiny flowers open during the first warm 

 days of the late winter or early spring, long before the 

 appearance of its leaves and a week or two before the blos- 

 soming of the red maple or the elm. The staminate and 

 pistillate flowers are borne on different trees. The fruit of 

 the white maple ripens in April and May, about the time 

 when the leaves unfold. The samaras, or keys, are larger 

 than those of the other maples. 



The fruit of the maples usually ripens in the autumn and 



