VINE MA I'll:. [23 



VINE MAPLE. 



(Acer eircinatum.) 



"The dying charm of Autumn's farewell smile." — Anon. 



OF all the splendors of forest foliage as seen in the wild 

 woodlands of an American Autumn, no gay and festive 

 leaf can compare with the Vine Maple for- brilliancy 

 of coloring or for beauty of form ; radiant nerved and glow- 

 ing as ten thousand little sylvan suns in yellow gold and 

 royal purple, spangling her painted boughs — pretty as an 

 infant's palm — causing the heart affections to leap for joy, as 

 the young roe upon the mountains. Flowers may bloom 

 and fruits blush, brighter berries cluster as rubies and gem 

 the bowers, but these leaves glow and burn brighter still — 

 bright as the rose of Eden on love's own bosom — brilliant as 

 the bow that spans the heavens in the bright shining after 

 May showers. 



This large shrub or tree, in California, is seldom or never 

 over twenty or thirty feet high, although said to reach forty 

 in Oregon, and from eight to ten inches in diameter in Men- 

 docino County ; bark green when young, whitish in age ; it 

 has an arching vine-like habit of, as it were, leaping up and 

 bending down, and w T herever the top touches the ground 

 taking root, and so traveling, meanwhile numerous offshoots 

 spring up, interlacing in all directions, forming almost im- 

 penetrable thickets or clumps. This natural habit of layer- 

 ing is also often noticed in the Red Sw T amp or Soft Maple 

 (Acer rubrum) and Mountain Maple (A. spicatum), and some 

 others, but in none so invariably as this species. Next to the 

 Vine Maple as an Autumnal ornament, is this Red or Crim- 

 son-leaf Maple. The common appellation of " vine," is 

 designed to express both the form of the leaf — being vine or 

 grape-like — as well as the vine-like habit of the shrub as to 

 body and branch. 



The wood is very hard and close grained — one of the hard- 

 est of maples — and takes a fine polish ; valuable for minor 

 purposes. The wood is white and exceedingly tough ; the 

 young and slender branches make excellent hoops, used by 

 the Indians for their salmon scoop-nets, etc. The leaves are 

 much more heart-shape, sinused, or bayed, than Hooker's 

 plate (Flora and Forestry of North America), and not at all 

 palmed by the united veins or nerves at the inserted point 

 of radiation at the top of the leaf-stock, and only seven-lobed 

 (rarely rudiments of two more subsidiary lobes at the innei v 



