Silver maple

“ This same silver maple is a bone of contention among tree-men, at times. Some will tell you it is "coarse"; and so it is when planted in an improper place upon a narrow street, allowed to flourish unrestrained for years, and then ruthlessly cropped off to a headless trunk! But set it on a broad lawn, or upon a roadside with generous room, and its noble stature and grace need yield [Pg 6] nothing to the most artistic elm of New England. And in the deep woods it sometimes reaches a majesty and a dignity that compel admiration. ”

“ In striking contrast with this obese robber the stately and independent silver-maple has inconspicuous flowers that might be readily overlooked if they did not appear before the foliage. The genus Acer, to which the silver or soft maple belongs, is very variable in this last point. Some species, like the one in hand (Acer dasycarpum, Eh.) , flower before unfolding the leaves; others, like the highly prized sugar-maple, have the flowers and leaves appear at the same time; while others are laggards, and bring forth their blossoms after the leaves are fully formed and busy with their work. ”

“ They have shorter and stronger branches than silver maple; are less liable to be attacked by disease; are more handsome in every way; but they demand damper soil, and succeed poorly in any other. That drawback tends to restrict the artificial planting of this tree.
Mountain Maple (Acer spicatum) is known also as moose maple, low maple, and water maple. It is a small tree at its best, seldom more than twenty-five feet high and eight inches in diameter, while in most parts of its range it is only a shrub. Its best growth is on mountain slopes of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. ”

“ Silver Maple is extensively planted along streets and in parks. It grows rapidly, often becoming too large, and has a less perfect crown than some of the other maples.
188
189
RED MAPLE
Acer rubrum, L.
Form.—Height 60-100 feet, diameter 1-31⁄2 feet; trunk usually more or less inclined or twisted; crown rather narrow and rounded.
Leaves.—Opposite, simple, 3-4 inches long, about as broad, lobes 3-5, coarsely toothed, green and glabrous above, whitish beneath.
Flowers.—March-April; polygamo-monoecious, or dioecious; in few-flowered clusters on shoots of the previous year ”

“ A few years back, maple ranked next to mahogany for these purposes, but lately black walnut has been more in favor. With the exception of the ash-leaved variety, a Western tree, all the American maples are said to be found in this county. The moose-wood, [1] a small tree of graceful, airy growth, and bearing the prettiest flowers of the tribe, to whose young shoots the moose is said to have been so partial; the mountain maple, a shrub growing in thick clumps with an upright flower, the scarlet maple, the silver, the sugar, and the black sugar maples, are all included among our trees. ”

“ When they arose from their knees the darkness had suddenly become transparent. A mysterious rustle and whisper of awakening life was on all sides, the dawn was on the point of breaking. Scotty's fire, like his worldly hopes, had died down to pale ashes, but far out on the faintly grey bosom of Lake Simcoe, and away beyond its dark forest-ring, soon to put all lesser lights to shame in their triumphant blaze, were kindling the fires of Heaven. ”

“ The tall firs and pines swept the white earth with their snow-laden branches, the drooping limbs looking like throngs of cowled heads, bent to worship in the sacred stillness of a vast temple. For the forest was, indeed, a place in which to wonder and to pray, a place all white and holy, filled with the mystery and awe of death. ”

“ It is the maples that first light up our woods with these flickering fires. No country of the old world has trees that make such a wonderful color show as our maples. Their leaves are never of one tint, but are mottled and shaded, from lemon yellow to orange, flame-red and crimson. You know the thin-leafed red maple sifts sunlight. To look up through one, in the fall, is like looking through a splendid stained glass window of a church.
The oaks show no yellow, and the leaves are of a strong solid color. ”

“ The red maple is a lover of swamps. It thrives, however, on hillsides, if the soil be moist; and is planted widely in parks and along village streets. In beauty it excels all other maples. In early spring its swelling buds glow like garnets on the brown twigs (see illustrations, pages 198-199) . The opening flowers have red petals, and the first leaves, which accompany the early bloom, are red. In May the dainty flat keys, in clusters on their long, flexible stems, are as red as a cock's comb, and beautiful against the bright green of the new foliage. ”

“ Among the North American species there are several that grow to splendid dimensions in their native forest. One of the most distinct is the red maple (A. rubrum) , a beautiful object in spring when it bears flowers profusely, which, in some varieties, are of a charming red colour. There are a few specimens in England of the well-known sugar maple (A. saccharum) , but it seldom thrives in this country, though it has been frequently tried since its introduction, according to Loudon, in 1735. ”

“ The most constant use of curled maple is for the stocks of fowling-pieces and rifles, as it affords toughness and strength combined with lightness and elegance. The inner bark is dusky red. On boiling, it yields a purple colour which with sulphate of iron affords a black dye. The wood is inferior to that of the preceding species in strength and as fuel. Sugar was made from the sap by the French Canadians, but the production is only half as great as that from the sugar maple. ”

“ As the spring advances those pretty crimson leaves become dark green above and a light green on the under-side, and they lose the soft down which covered them, but even when fully out they are never so large as those of the Sycamore. When autumn draws near, with its cold winds and frosty nights, the Field Maple leaves change colour once more and become brilliant yellow; you will see them shining in the hedgerows like a bush of gold. ”

“ But it has long been wooed by the air and the water, by moss and lichen; the years have lent it beauty, softened its curves, rounded its angles and brought it the richness of age.
Boulders are sometimes clothed with a larger growth. I have in mind one, from whose apex springs a maple at least half a century old. It lies at the head of a swamp, and in autumn this tree is always one of the first to turn. In August when the tupelos show signs of change, the maple is already glowing with color. ”

“ Of the broad-leaved, deciduous trees which grow near the coast, the white maple (Acer macrophyllum) is the most beautiful and useful. It grows and decays rapidly,—the mature tree attaining to the height of eighty feet, and a diameter of six feet; then decaying from the centre outward, lets its branches die and fall off, w T hile from the root other new trunks spring up and attain a considerable size in four or five years. The wood has a beautiful grain, and is valuable for cabinet manufactures, taking a high polish. The foliage is handsome, being very broad and of a light green. ”

“ And this, I suppose, is the reason that, while nature seems to scatter them so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by their contrasts, nor disturb, but only soothe. The brilliant scarlet and the brilliant yellow are different lines of the maple-leaves, and the first changes into the last. I saw one maple-tree, its centre yellow as gold, set in a framework of red. The native poplars have different shades of green, verging towards yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine. Most of the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of summer ”

“ The red maple (Acer rubrus) , another species, is very bright when the leaves are changing, but it gives no sugar."
"Then I will not let it grow in my garden, nurse!"
"It is good for other purposes, my dear. The settlers use the bark dyeing wool; and a jet black ink can be made from it, by boiling down the bark with a bit of copperas, in an iron vessel; so you see it is useful. The bright red flowers of this tree look very pretty in the spring; it grows best by the water-side, and some call it 'the swamp-maple.'"
This was all Mrs. Frazer could tell Lady Mary about the maple-trees. ”

“ The flowers appear in the spring before the leaves, in dense clusters, and are of a greenish-yellow color. The fruit ripens in late spring. It consists of a pair of winged seeds or “keys” with wings 1 to 2 inches long on slender, flexible, threadlike stems about an inch long.
The wood is soft, weak, even-textured, rather brittle, easily worked, and decays readily when exposed. It is considerably used for boxboards, furniture, veneers and fuel.
The red maple, or swamp maple, Acer rubrum L., has leaves deeply lobed with the lobes sharply toothed. The autumn color is deep red. ”

“ In October they turn to a rich yellow, and the Maple is then prominent even in a distant view, for the bright colour of the foliage makes the tree stand out prominently, in strong contrast with the still deep green of the Oaks or Firs beyond.
The Maples are among the trees that have complete flowers, although in this case they happen to be greenish yellow. They are about a quarter of an inch across, have narrow sepals and narrower petals, eight stamens, and a two-lobed flattened ovary, that develops into the pair of broad-winged "keys," or samaras. ”

“ The colouring power of gold is, however, very great, when in the fine state of division in which we have it, being an intense purple to blue colour, and a very little of this mixed visually with the ruddy or brown colour of the albuminate which has been discoloured by light gives, after fixing, a pleasing tone. A picture, when toned thus, is composed of silver subchloride, metallic gold, and an organic compound of silver. ”

“ It weighs about 30 ℔ per cub. ft.
There are several varieties of maple growing in Canada and the United States, but the one in most common use is the sugar maple, also called rock maple, which grows freely in the districts around the Great Lakes. The wood is fine-grained, frequently with a beautiful wavy figure, yellowish white to light brown in colour; it is very hard, tough and durable. Birds’-eye maple has a peculiar curly grain, and is much in request for ornamental joinery. ”

“ The white maple is principally found on the banks of rivers, and on the banks of such only as have a clean gravelly bottom and clear water. It is most luxuriant on flats which are subject to annual inundations, and is usually the first settler on alluvial deposits. ‘The banks of the Sandy river, in Maine,’ says Michaux, ‘and those of the Connecticut in Windsor, Vermont, are the most northerly points at which I have seen the white maple. It is found more or less on all the rivers of the United States, flowing from the mountains to the Atlantic, but becomes scarce in South Carolina and Georgia. ”

“ It is known as 'curled maple' and 'bird's-eye maple,' and the common variety looks like satin-wood. In the curled maple the fibres are in waves instead of in straight lines, and the surface seems to change with alternate light and shade; in the bird's-eye, irregular snarls of fibres look like roundish projections rising from hollow places, each one resembling the eye of a bird. Buckets, tubs and many useful things are made of the straight variety, and for lasts it is considered better than any other kind of wood. ”

“ I said that strength, greenness, a full-grown trunk were necessary before sweet wholesome sap could circulate from root to top of a sugar maple. That saplings amounted to just nothing at all. In fact, they kept absorbing, but gave forth nothing; that a rich maturity was desirable before the maple became important as a forest-tree or an object of wealth.
I think he understood me—or rather he understood that I, with the exquisite intuition of genius, understood him. For right off, on that, he said that he would like to live in Vermont, and own maple-trees himself ”

“ Its whiteness, in fact, has supplied the designations of this metal in all parts of the world. Silver is the ‘white iron’ of the Kaffirs, the ‘white gold’ of the Afghans, the ‘white copper’ of the Vedic Indians; and the antique Accadians and Egyptians defined it by the same obvious quality. [324] The Greek arguros is, then, a comparatively late word, formed, perhaps, after the Achæan tribes were already settled in their Hellenic home, when their first supplies of silver began to come in from Pontic Asia Minor. ”

“ The black maple is so like the sugar maple that they are easily confused, but its stout branchlets are orange-colored, the leaves are smooth and green on both sides, scantly toothed, and they droop as if their stems were too weak to hold up the blades. The keys spread more widely than those of the sugar maple.
The black maple is the sugar maple of South Dakota and Iowa. It becomes rarer as one goes east. It is an admirable lumber tree, as well as a noble street and shade tree. ”

“ The samaras of the early flowering maple trees fall quite early in the summer, but there are other maples whose samaras remain on the trees until autumn.
Maples make beautiful shade trees, and some species grow to a large size. One of the largest and most beautiful of them is the sugar maple, which is not only valuable as a shade tree, but yields delicious maple syrup from its sap. ”

“ It is a hard maple, that grows as rapidly as the soft maple; is hardy, possesses a beautiful foliage of black green leaves, and is symmetrical in shape. Through eastern Iowa I found it growing wild, and a favorite tree with the early settlers, who wanted something that gave shade and protection to their homes quickly on their prairie farms. ”