CLXI. — THE HEDGE MAPLE. 
Acer campestre Linne. 
T HE Common, Hedge, or Field Maple (Acer campestre Linn6) is the only truly 
indigenous representative of the genus Acer and of the Family Aceracece in our 
islands. Its congener the Sycamore (Acer Pseudoplalanus Linne) is, it is true, a very 
common tree ; but it has not been introduced for more than a few centuries. 
The Family A ceracece comprises three genera and about a hundred species, most 
of the hundred belonging to the genus Acer. Though we associate the beautifully 
varied autumnal tints of Maple leaves chiefly with the dry continental heat and cold 
of North America, a large proportion of the species are natives of that part of Asia 
which lies between Japan and the Himalaya. Maples at the present day are, in fact, 
essentially natives of the North Temperate Zone ; but well-preserved fossil remains 
of the group occur in the Brown-coal beds of Dakota, slightly more modern than 
our Chalk, and in the Swiss Miocene deposits. 
They are all trees or shrubs, with opposite, exstipulate leaves ; polysymmetric 
flowers, generally green or inconspicuous ; and two, or three, carpels united into a 
superior schizocarp and each furnished with a wing and containing two ovules, only 
one of which usually becomes a seed. There are generally five sepals, five petals, 
and eight stamens in two whorls, inserted upon a prominent ring-shaped but lobed 
honey-secreting disk. All Maples have three principal veins or ribs in the leaf, 
radiating in a palmate manner from the apex of the petiole, and in most cases the 
leaf-blade is correspondingly lobed. In his usefully suggestive “ Manual and 
Dictionary of Flowering Plants,” Dr. J. C. Willis writes : — 
“ An interesting exercise is to go through a collection of Acers in a herbarium or elsewhere, comparing the leaf-tips as to 
degree of development of the acuminate ‘drip-tips,’ noting at the same time the kind of climate from which each 
specimen has come. It will be easily seen that there is a good general correlation between the length of the tip and the 
wetness of the climate. ” 
By this criterion our Hedge Maple would seem to belong to dry conditions ; 
for the characteristic outline of its leaves, which are from an inch and a half to two 
inches across, is five slightly-notched, obtuse lobes, radiating from a broad, slightly- 
cordate base, with blunt sinuses between them. Their slender stalks, upwards of 
an inch in length, are crimson, and when young the leaves themselves are downy. 
As they become smooth they assume a brownish or yellowish shade of green ; and 
in a favourable autumn the tree will, as Tennyson put it, “ burn itself away,” in 
lemon-yellow or dead-gold. 
The branches spread somewhat horizontally ; and, when isolated and thus well 
grown, the tree assumes a compact, rounded head, not unlike that of the larger 
Sycamore. The bark is smooth at first, but soon becomes brown and rough, 
splitting into longitudinal corky wings. The young shoots yield a white milky 
latex, which contains sugar, though not to the same extent as does that of some 
