48 
LITTLE WANDELIERS. 
The red maple, which blooms early in the spring 
before its leaves come out, has bright red fringes. 
Sometimes these red-flowered trees 
bloom in January, in Florida, when 
the trees and bushes around them 
are bare, and you can imagine they make 
the swamps where they grow look very 
bright. 
The pistillate flowers are not quite as 
airy as the staminate ones, but still they 
make pretty fringes upon the trees. 
The wind blows the pollen from the 
staminate flowers to the pistillate ones 
growing on neighboring trees, and that is 
why the flowers hang out on long stems. 
Some maples have green fringes and some have yel- 
low ones, but all are beautiful. 
After the flowering season is over, the staminate 
flowers disappear. But the pistillate flowers are fol- 
lowed by clusters of samaras, which are sometimes 
almost as bright in color and as pretty as the flower 
fringes. 
When the samaras are ripe, they fall from the tree 
and are blown about by the wind. They cannot fly as 
far as the plumed seeds, but they sometimes get carried 
quite a distance. 
The seed within the samara often sprouts soon after 
