see it clearly

Maple Tree

The Maple (Acer campestre) is a representative of the genus Acer and of the order Sapindaceae. 

Though it is, perhaps, chiefly with the autumn glories of North American woodlands that we associate the beautifully varied tints of the dying leaves of the Maples, the greater number of the fifty or sixty species of the group are natives of Asia, and chiefly of that part of Asia which lies between Japan and the Himalayas. They are, in fact, essentially trees of the North Temperate zone; but in looking intelligently at our humble hedgerow bush--for the Maple seldom stands alone, or reaches the dimensions of a timber-tree--we should bear in mind, not only the range in space of its existing fellows, but also their interesting extinct representatives in the remote past. It has been suggested that all the floras of the world have had a northern origin, and that plants in general tend to migrate rather from north to south and from east to west than in the reverse direction. In explanation of the first of these lines of passage Darwin pointed out that as there is more land in the north the plants of those regions may have existed in greater numbers, and so have attained under competition a higher state of perfection or dominating power; but no one has yet explained the meaning of Bishop Berkeley's dictum that--

"Westward the course of empire takes its way,"

at least in so far as it is true in the vegetable world.

Among the most ancient known assemblages of fruit-bearing--i.e., "angiospermous"--plants in the world is that in the Lignites, or Brown-coal, of the Dakotah group, on the plains of eastern Kansas and Nebraska, a group apparently intermediate in geological age between our Chalk and the Thanet Sands that overlie it; and here, among many other trees, occur what are perhaps the oldest-known Maples. In rocks far more modern, and yet of immeasurable antiquity--the Miocene beds of OEningen, in Switzerland--as many as nineteen well-marked species of Maple have been discovered, a greater number than occurs in any one district at the present day. The plants with which they are associated have a North American "facies," or general character, and the whole of this Miocene flora is believed to have come from what is now the United States, across Asia, the greater part of it retreating along the same line in a reverse direction, at a later period, before the southerly advance of the increasing cold of the Glacial Epoch. A Tulip-tree in China, the Magnolias of Japan, and a few other stragglers, still show the line of march; and perhaps our own Maple is a relic of the same time, which has survived the cold, and in our autumn woodlands still surprises us with an exotic wealth of color.

Some of its congeners are large trees; but the Maple is seldom more than ten or twenty feet high. In sheltered situations, however, it considerably exceeds these dimensions, trees of twenty years of age being recorded as reaching thirty-four feet in height. One at Farnham Castle, in Surrey, is recorded by Loudon, in 1835, as being thirty feet high at fifty years of age; one at Finborough Hall, Suffolk, forty feet at seventy years; one at Braystock, Essex, as fifty feet at eighty years; and one growing in stony clay at Melbury Park, Dorset, a hundred years of age and only thirty-eight feet in height, having however a trunk two feet nine inches in diameter, whilst that of its head was thirty-seven feet. The finest recorded Maple, however, is probably that at Blairlogie in Stirlingshire, growing in an exposed situation in light loam on dry gravel, which at the age of three hundred and two years had reached a height of fifty-five feet, with a diameter of four feet, and a head forty-three feet across.

The branches of the Maple spread somewhat horizontally, and when growing apart from other trees it acquires a compact rounded head not unlike that of many Sycamores. The bark of the young branches is smooth, but early becomes brown, rough, and corky, splitting in longitudinal furrows, and affording a pleasing contrast to the crimson stalks of the young leaves, and to the somewhat somber greens of the foliage.

All the Maple group have three principal veins or ribs radiating from the base of the leaf, and in most cases the blade is lobed in a correspondingly palmate manner. The leaves of the English Maple seldom much exceed two inches across, averaging only an inch and a half; but their outline is very characteristic, the five main lobes of the leaf and the clefts or "sinuses" between them being alike, whilst the base of the leaf is broad and obtusely cordate--i.e., heart-shaped. They have generally a few slight notches in the margin; but are sometimes quite entire. The slender leaf-stalks, over an inch in length, are crimson, and the young leaves are downy and of a blue-green tint, which afterwards changes as they become smooth to a shade in which there is a considerable admixture of brown and yellow. In a favorable autumn they turn to the clearest lemon-yellow, not retaining a trace of green, and not decaying to the copper-brown of sodden decay until they have fallen from the tree; so that, though less varied than those of their kinsfolk the Horse-Chestnuts, they are brighter and less melancholy in their associations.

It is distinctive of the Common Maple that its inconspicuous clusters of green flowers terminate the young shoots of the same year, instead of being produced by lateral buds altogether distinct from those which develop into foliage, as is the case in many other species of the genus. These clusters stand erect, unlike those of the Sycamore, which hang downwards; and the peduncles, and even the sepals, anthers, and ovaries are downy, so as often to be seen thickly covered with dust. Inconspicuous as are both sepals and petals among the young leaves in May and June, they offer but little attraction to insects. The flowers low down in the cluster are male or staminate, the terminal ones bi-sexual, and, sometimes at least, "proterandrous"--i.e., the stamens first coming to maturity; so that, though they may commonly be fertilized by the wind, or even be fertile with their own pollen, the flies that do visit them undoubtedly effect an occasional cross.

The fruit is a characteristic of the genus, the hairy ovary at an early stage in its development showing signs of the wings that are to grow from the side of either carpel; so that it forms a two-winged "samara," like two blades of a screw paddle, with a chamber at the base of each containing one seed, though there were at first two ovules. Continental botanists have subdivided the species Acer campestre of Linnaeus mainly according to the presence or absence of down on ripe fruit, our British variety, in which this is present, being termed Acer molle, or A. campestre hebecarpum. The varieties, however, agree in having the wings of the samara smooth, and spreading almost horizontally--in which they differ from those of the Sycamore, which are "ascending," as they do also in size--each wing being only about half an inch in length, and of a somewhat oblong outline, and tinged with red. The function of this double-winged fruit is clearly seen when it falls whirling in the autumn breeze, wafting the seed to some spot where it may have a good chance of growing up without exclusion from light and air by the boughs on which it formerly hung.

The wood of the maple is excellent as fuel, and can be made into charcoal of the best quality; but being compact, fine-grained, and often beautifully veined, besides taking an excellent polish, it is chiefly in demand for ornamental purposes. Tables made of this wood were much prized among the ancient Romans, and veneers and various turned articles are still made from it, especially in France. The wood of the roots is frequently full of knots; and mediaeval alms-dishes, known as "mazer" bowls, made from it, highly polished and generally silver-mounted, are among the prizes of the virtuoso. Allied North-American species yield the beautifully-mottled furniture-woods with which we are all familiar, and which are so commonly imitated by the grainer.

In France the young shoots, being tough and flexible, are employed as whips; and being exceptionally tolerant of the shears and the bill-hook it recommends itself for hedges and the "topiary" work of geometrical gardening. The leaves and young shoots are also gathered when green and dried for winter provender for cattle; but though the sap contains a larger proportion of the sugar so characteristic of the genus than does that of the Sycamore, the tree does not bleed freely. Maple sugar is obtained from the two American species, A. saccharinum, the Rock or Bird's-eye Maple, and A. rubrum, the Scarlet or Curled Maple, the latter only yielding half as much as the former.

Though, in the words of the poet-laureate, Maple in autumn will "burn itself away" till all the wood-side glows in the fitful sunshine like dead gold, so as to commend itself to him who plants for beauty, our native woodland trees can seldom show any autumn coloring that can vie with the surprising blaze of an American forest in the fall, an effect mainly due to the Scarlet Maple, A. rubrum. This, together with most of the American and Japanese species, is now commonly cultivated as an ornamental shrub in England; its red flowers in spring being less conspicuous than its autumn coloration. The Sycamore-like A. rufinerve, Sieb. and Zucc., from Niphon, with red veins to the leaves, and the many varieties of A. palmatum, Thunb., commonly known as polymorphum, from the same country, such as the cut-leaved dissectum and the copper-tinted atro-purpureum, are desirable trees for park and shrubbery; whilst our suburban gardens are now almost overstocked with the variegated A. negundo. The bright green of this species, however, with its milky whiteness delicately tinged when young with pink, is well suited to contrast in such situations with the regular and sombre Wellingtonias, with "purple" Beeches, or with masses of green Lilac bushes.

Maples are chiefly propagated by seed, though the varieties must of course be multiplied by layers, cuttings, or grafts. The seeds ripen in October, and when the samaras, or "keys," as they are popularly termed, begin to turn brown, they should be gathered by hand, and the maturity of the seed be tested by opening one or two of the capsules, and observing if the cotyledons are green and succulent. It is advisable to keep the seeds unsown until spring, since moles eat many of those sown in autumn; but those of our common species seldom germinate until the second or third year. They should not be covered with more than half an inch of soil.

Besides being occasionally blotched in autumn by the attacks of the black fungus Rhytisma acerinum, so universal on the Sycamore, the leaves of the Maple are also commonly disfigured either by a mildew or by a gall. The Maple blight or mildew (Uncinula bicornis) gives the whole plant a hoary appearance, as if sprinkled with powdered chalk, both surfaces of the leaves being alike affected; but this disease must not be confounded with an unhealthy condition formerly attributed to another fungus, and known as Erineum acerinum, which in spring produces patches of pinkish or violet hoariness on the under surfaces of the leaves, glistening like hoar-frost. With equal frequency the leaves of the Maple are seen to be thickly studded on their upper surfaces with red conical swellings. These are the results of the punctures of a mite (Phytoptus myriadeum), and they are interesting as an example of the general rule that when such irritation occurs, as is also seen in the galls on the Rose and the Violet, if a pigment is produced it is one which the plant is prone to develop normally either in flower or leaf.