BOX ELDER OR ASH-LEAVED MAPLE. Ill 



BOX ELDER OR ASH-LEAVED MAPLE. 



(Acer negundo.) 



" Gro mark in meditative mood where Autumn 

 Steals o'er his woods with mellowing touch like time — 



"lis a scene 

 That o'er us sheds the mild and musing calm of wisdom." 



— Anon. 



A HANDSOME rather round-topped tree, with great 

 wealth of soft, velvety foliage, constituting one of the 

 densest shades known to California. A tree forty to 

 seventy-five feet high, rarely over two feet in diameter ; trees 

 sixty by two feet are found in the vicinity of San Francisco, 

 at Tamalpais; in Carson Canon, forty by one and one half; 

 at Corta Madera, Olema Creek, forty to fifty feet, and of 

 great beauty. The Autumn foliage does not color so uni- 

 formly as other maples. After the fall of the leaf the sun- 

 light is let freely in through its open and widely expanding 

 branches, which then seem scattered, and the twigs rather 

 sparse and heavy; its magic changes and bold contrasts 

 between these respective states, are as wonderful as the wild 

 walnut. The compound three foliate leaves are large, and 

 like the young twigs very velvety ; the separate leaflets nearly 

 broadly egg-shaped, and somewhat three to five lobed, a lit- 

 tle unequally coarsely cut-toothed on the margins above the 

 entire broadly wedge-formed base — the lateral ones on very 

 short leaf-stems, often only lobed on one side — the terminal 

 odd one with much longer leaf-stem; these, with abundant 

 drooping maple-like clusters of fruit, so deeply in-fill the 

 top as with a pliant massive mantle of velvet, that few trees 

 can equal the quiet, elegant, and dignified expression of the 

 California Box Elder. These qualities, so manifest to all, ren- 

 der it one of the choicest and most desirable shades for rural 

 adornment and road-side adaptation as avenue trees; hence, 

 we find it held in high esteem by the public wherever avail- 

 able; the timber is soft and white; sap yielding sugar, a 

 tree requiring a soil of some considerable moisture. On 

 the coast south, this tree abounds, and in a few instances 

 may be larger. A noteworthy fact of the instinct of the 

 great gregarious butterfly (Danais archippus) is, that oft as 

 the autumn air is filled with their living clouds, migrating 

 to the happy isles beyond the Pacific floods, when those 

 cold and torpid nights come down on their festive flights, 

 they must needs roost and rest, for they can no longer fly, then 



