A bushy tree, occasionally 25°—30° high, with a short trunk 6′—8′ in diameter, small upright branches, and slender branchlets light gray and pubescent when they first appear, becoming glabrous during the summer, bright red during their first winter, gray or pale brown the following season, and blotched or streaked with green toward the base; more often a tall or low shrub. Winter-buds acute; the terminal ⅛′ long, with bright red outer scales more or less coated with hoary tomentum, those of the inner ranks becoming at maturity 1′ or more in length and then lanceolate, pale and papery; axillary buds much smaller and glabrous or puberulous. Bark of the trunk very thin, reddish brown, smooth or slightly furrowed. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown tinged with red, with thick lighter colored sapwood.
Distribution. Moist rocky hillsides usually in the shade of other trees, and really arborescent only on the western slopes of the high mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina; Newfoundland and Labrador to Hudson Bay, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, and southward through the northern states, and westward to Minnesota and northeastern Iowa, and along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia.
Occasionally cultivated as an ornament of parks and gardens in the northern states.
4. [Acer pennsylvanicum] L. Striped Maple. Moose Wood.
Leaves rounded or cordate at base, palmately 3-nerved, 3-lobed at apex, with short lobes contracted into a tapering serrate point, and finely and sharply doubly serrate, when they unfold thin, pale rose color and coated with ferrugineous pubescence, especially on the lower surface and on the petioles, and at maturity glabrous with the exception of tufts of ferrugineous hairs in the axils of the principal nerves on the two surfaces, thin, pale green above, rather paler below, 5′—6′ long and 4′—5′ wide; turning in the autumn clear light yellow; petioles stout, grooved, 1½′—2′ in length, with an enlarged base nearly encircling the branch. Flowers bright canary-yellow, opening toward the end of May or early in June when the leaves are nearly fully grown, on slender pedicels ¼′—½′ long, in slender drooping long-stemmed racemes 4′—6′ in length, the staminate and pistillate usually in different racemes on the same plant; sepals linear-lanceolate to obovate, ¼′ long and a little shorter and narrower than the obovate petals; stamens 7—8, shorter than the petals in the staminate flower, rudimentary in the pistillate flower; ovary purplish brown, glabrous, in the staminate flower reduced to a minute point; styles united nearly to the top, with spreading recurved stigmas. Fruit in long drooping racemes, glabrous, with thin spreading wings ¾′ long, and marked on one side of each nutlet by a small cavity; seeds ¼′ long, dark red-brown, and slightly rugose.
A tree, 30°—40° high, with a short trunk 8′—10′ in diameter, small upright branches, and slender smooth branchlets pale greenish yellow at first, bright reddish brown during their first winter, and at the end of two or three years striped like the trunk with broad pale lines; or often much smaller and shrubby in habit. Winter-buds: the terminal conspicuously stipitate, sometimes almost ½′ long, much longer than the axillary buds, covered by two thick bright red spatulate boat-shaped scales prominently keeled on the back, the inner scales green and foliaceous, becoming 1½′—2′ long, ½′ wide, pubescent, and bright yellow or rose color. Bark of the trunk ⅛′—¼′ thick, reddish brown, marked longitudinally by broad pale stripes, and roughened by many oblong horizontal excrescences. Wood light, soft, close-grained, light brown, with thick lighter colored sapwood of 30-40 layers of annual growth.
Distribution. Usually in the shade of other trees, often forming in northern New England a large part of their shrubby undergrowth; shores of Ha-Ha Bay, Quebec, westward along the shores of Lake Ontario and the islands of Lake Huron to northern Wisconsin, and southward through the Atlantic states and along the Appalachian Mountains to northern Georgia; ascending to altitudes of 5000°; common in the north Atlantic states, especially in the interior and elevated regions; of its largest size on the slopes of the Big Smoky Mountains, Tennessee, and of the Blue Ridge in North and South Carolina.
Sometimes cultivated as an ornamental tree in the northern states, and occasionally in Europe.