Complimentary 
NEW SERIES VOL. X 
NO. 2 
ARNOLD ARBORETUM 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
BULLETIN 
OF 
POPULAR INFORMATION 
JAMAICA PLAIN. MASS. MAY 6. 1924 
On the 1st of April spring in the Arboretum was probably ten days 
or two weeks earlier than usual, but owing to much cold and rainy 
weather flowers now look as if they might be as late when fully open 
as they were early a month ago. The Missouri and eastern Asiatic 
Witch Hazels blooming in January and February are the earliest plants 
to flower in the Arboretum; these are shrubs or shrub-like trees, and 
the earliest of the large trees which shows its flowers in this climate 
is the Silver or Soft Maple, Acer saccharinum, which blooms here by 
the first or middle of March and has nearly ripened its seeds before 
the leaves are half grown. It is interesting that the seeds of this tree 
fall as soon as ripe and germinating at once produce plants with sev- 
eral pairs of leaves before the end of summer. This is a large, fast- 
growing tree, widely distributed from New Brunswick to Louisiana, 
and to Nebraska and Missouri, reaching often the height of one hun- 
dred and twenty feet, with a trunk three feet in diameter and a droop- 
ing head of wide-spreading branches. Very common on the sandy banks 
of streams and less common in deeply submerged swamps, it is less 
abundant near the Atlantic coast and at high altitudes on the Appa- 
lachian Mountains. This tree is so easily transplanted and grows so 
rapidly that it has been largely used in the United States as a street 
and roadside tree, but the brittle branches which break easily detract 
from its value for such purposes; and the wood is less valuable than 
that of the Sugar or Red Maple. Several forms differing slightly in 
the shape of the leaves, and one a small shapely shrub, are occasion- 
ally cultivated. 
Few trees have flowered during April in the Arboretum. The prin- 
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